Individual Liberty - Evernote

not infrequently its commendation. Several of these are here subjected to analysis and
criticism by Liberty's editor:
The persistent way in which Greenbackers dodge argument on the money question is
very tiresome to a reasoning mortal. Let an Anarchist give a Greenbacker his idea of a
good currency in the issue of which no government has any part, and it is ten to one
that he will answer: "Oh, that's not money. It isn't legal tender. Money is that thing
which the supreme law of the land declares to be legal tender for debts in the country
where that law is supreme."
Brick Pomeroy made such an answer to Stephen Pearl Andrews recently, and
appeared to think that he had said something final. Now, in the first place, this
definition is not correct, for that is money which performs the functions of money, no
matter who issues it. But even if it were correct, of what earthly consequence could it
be? Names are nothing. Who cares whether the Anarchistic currency be called money
or something else? Would it make exchange easy? Would it make production active?
Would it measure prices accurately? Would it distribute wealth honestly? Those are
the questions to be asked concerning it; not whether it meets the arbitrary definition
adopted by a given school. A system of finance capable of supplying a currency
satisfying the above requirements is a solution of what is generally known as the
money question; and Greenbackers may as well quit now as later trying to bind people
to this f act by paltry quibbling with words.
But after thus rebuking Brick Pomeroy's evasion of Mr. Andrews, something needs to
be said in amendment of Mr. Andrew's position as stated by him in an admirable
article on "The Nature of Money," published in the New York Truth Seeker of March
9, 1884 - Mr. Andrews divides the properties of money into essentials, incidentals,
and accidentals. The essential properties of money, he says@those in the absence of
which it is not money whatever else it may have, and in the possession of which it is
money whatever else it may lack, re those of measuring mutual estimates in an
exchange, recording a commercial transaction, and inspiring confidence in a promise
which it makes. All other properties of money Mr. Andrews considers either incidental
or accidental, and among the accidental properties he mentions the security or
"collateral" which may back up and guarantee money.
Now as an analysis made for the purpose of arriving at a definition, this is entirely
right. No exception can be taken to it. But it is seriously to be feared that nearly every
person who reads it will infer that, because security or "collateral" is an accidental
feature of money, it is an unimportant and well-nigh useless one. And that is where
the reader will make a great mistake. It is true that money is money, with or without
security, but it cannot be a perfect or reliable money in the absence of security; nay, it
cannot be a money worth considering in this age. The advance from barter to
unsecured money is a much shorter and less important step logically than that from
unsecured money to secured money. The rude vessel in which primitive men first
managed to Boat upon the water very likely had all the essentials of a boat, but it was
much nearer to no boat at all than it was to the stanch, swift, and sumptuous Cunarder
that now speeds its way across the Atlantic in a week. It was a boat, sure enough; but
not a boat in which a very timid or even moderately cautious man would care to risk
his life in more than five feet of water beyond swimming distance from the shore. It
had all the essentials, but it lacked a great many accidentals. Among them, for