Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 November 1876 — Honest Honey. [ARTICLE]

Honest Honey.

Monet, in the proper sense of the term, Is’that commodity which in,a given community is, by usage or law, or by both, employed to express the relative values of all other commodities, and also to facilitate the process of exchanging them for each other. The first of these functions it performs by its own value as the product of labor; and the second functioedependson its universal exchangeableness for all other things that are in the market to be bought and sold. The two functions, though not identical, are, nevertheless, intimately allied with each other, and practically inseparable. Money is the medium of exchange, because it is the measure of value; and, being such a measure, it naturally becomes such a medium. The first feature, then, of honest money is that it should be the product of labor, and that for this reason it should have an exchange value equal to that of any other product costing the same amount of labor. An ounce of gold has not the bulk in space or the weight of the wheat or corn that it will buy; but, for an average, it is the equivalent of the wheat or com in its labor-cost, and, hence, when estimated by the lapor standard, it has the same value. Either will exchange for the other. He who has the gold in his possession has a guaranty that with it he can procure its equivalent in wheat or corn, or in any other commodify having the same labor cost. The final principle is that of equivalency, as determined by the expenditure of labor. Real money is simply a concentrated form of labor, and, like all other other things to which value is attached, has the basis of its value in the labor which, for an average, is necessary to produce it. It is not" a cheat or a delusion, but a positive substance, that represents labor and has value for this reason. A second feature of honest money consists in the uniformity of its value. Absolute and unvarying uniformity of value is possessed by no productof labor; yet some of these products possess it in a much higher degree than others. All other things being equal, that commodity is best for monetary use which has this quality in the highest degree and which, hence, fluctuates least in its value at different times, and especially which is least subject to sudden fluctuations of value. The importance of stability in the value of money arises from the fact that it. is used as the measure of other values. If the same amount of money, considered relatively to these other values, means one tiling to-day and another tiling to-morrow, then he who receives it to-day will tomorrow be either a gainer or a loser by reason of this difference. If the money paid to him to-day be wages, and be spent to-morrow, and if as thus spent it will buy less than it would have bought to-day, and if this reduction of purchasing power be due not to the state of the market, but to the character of the money, then the laborer is practically cheated out of a portion of his wages by the money in use. It is not honest money. The use of it, whichever way it fluctuates, involves loss to somebody. The difficulty lies in the instability of its value

a third feature of honest money consists in identity as to the meaning of. its terms. Contracts tire usually made in the terms of money. A given party, for example, agrees to pay to another at a specified date so many dollars. Here the term dollars designates what is to lie paid. When the contract is made a dollar means a given quantity of coined gold, having a certain degree of fineness. The law thus defines it. Now, suppose that, after the contract is made, the law changes the import of this term, by the substitution of something else for gold—a piece of paper, for example—or by changing the quantity of gold indicated by the word dollar. This being done, it is manifest at a glance that die law has intervened between these parties and changed their contract, to the damage of one or the other. It retains the term dollar, but assigns to it a new meaning. Either it consists of something else than gold or it does not consist in the same quantity of gold; and in either case the dollar stipulated to be paid is not the dollar which the law authorizes to be paid. One or the other of the parties to the contract is cheated by a change in the meaning of the term dollar? The money of payment, not being the money of the contract, though having the same name, is not honest money. It is the instrument of a practical fraud. The application of these criteria of honest money to irredeemable paper money as a substitute for the money of actual value discloses the dishonesty and fraud perpetrated upon a community by forcing upon it such paper money. It is not really money at all, though dhe people are compelled by law to accept it as such in the settlement of contracts; and this is a fraud. Its labor-cost is no standard of its legal value. Having no basis of value in the material of which it is composed, it is subject to great fluctuations in its market value, according to the quantity issued—which is quite sure to be excessive—and according to the credit of the Government issuing it. When employed for the settlement of contracts made prior to the issue, it is simply a cheat by all the difference between its value and that of the money contemplated in those contracts. The great financial question before the people at the present time is whether they will continue the use of dishonest money, or, by resuming specie payment, return to the currency of actual value, which is the only kind of money that is really honest. —N. Y. Independent.

—A Burlington naturalist has been investigating the theory that a bumble-bee is put together in sliding joints, like a spy-glass, and comes to the conclusion that it is true, but that the joints are not retroactive, and while you can draw a bumble-bee out to the leneth of some twenty-eight inches, you can’t shut him up again by exerting a pressure of 140 pounds to the square inch, with the end of the thumb.-- Burlington UawkSye. —Trials never come singly. Tt was only last week that we learned that the coal supply would be exhausted in a little over 0,000,000 years, and now news comes that the planet Vulcan is lost. We can hardly think any one would be mean enough to steal Vulcan, but the nights have been dark lately, and there are good many tramps about.— Norwich Bulletin.