Переведите again, in reference to the interest rate or to the causes of business crises, men speak of money being more plentiful or less plentiful, when the amount of money has either not changed or has changed in the contrary direction, and what is really meant is that some change has occurred in credit conditions. so persistent is this idea that there is hardly an economic problem in which this characteristic monetary illusion does not serve to mislead popular opinion. the safest course for the student is to assume always that any explanation of processes of production or of trade in terms of money is superficial, and that the real forces and reasons are to be found only by penetrating more deeply into the situation. standard-commoditymoney. the actual money in use in almost every country today consists of a wide and confusing variety: gold, silver, nickel, copper, paper in various forms, issued by various authorities under various conditions as to amount and as to seigniorage. but, among all the kinds, in each country some one kind is found standing preëminent and in a peculiar position as the standard money to which the value of all the other kinds of money is in some manner adjusted. usually this standard money is composed of a material (gold or silver) that is a commodity; but there are many examples of paper money being for the time the standard. we mean bystandard money that kind, no matter what its form, which serves in any country as the unit in which the value of other kinds of money is expressed. the standard usually is a quantity of metal, of a certain weight and fineness, which, as a commodity, has a value also in industrial uses. coins of this standard are called full, or real, money by some writers who deny the title of money to everything else. sometimes the standard may legally be a double one, as in bimetallism, both gold and silver; but in such cases it actually is either gold or silver most of the time. the difficulties of the money problem must be attacked at the point of standardcommodity money, where it is nearest to ordinary value problems and is less complicated than when the various other kinds of money and the various money substitutes are included. 10. commodity money without coinage. let us consider the problem of money and its value as it would present itself if only one kind of commodity money were in use. this doubtless was in large measure, if not entirely, the case for a time in early societies after one material had proved itself to be the best suited for the purpose. the history of many kinds of money may, we have seen, be traced back to a point where they were not money, but commodities with only a direct value-in-use.such were ornaments, shells, furs, feathers, salt, cattle, fish, game, and tobacco. each of these materials has, in each situation, a value that is the reflection of its power to appeal to choice. now, if to thecommodity-useis added the monetary use, this increases the demand for that good. no new theory is required to explain the value of a commodity as it gradually acquires the added use of a medium of trade. the money use is one that works no physical or visible change in goods except a slight unavoidable abrasion, and at any time a person receiving a piece of commodity money may retain it for itsuse-valueas food, ornament, tool, or weapon, or may retain it for a time and then spend it as money. this case of value is no more difficult than that of anything else having two or more uses. for example, cattle are used for milk, for meat, and as beasts of burden. each of these uses is logically independent as a cause of value, yet all are mutually related, the value of cattle to a particular person being determined by the consideration of all the uses united into one scale of varying gratification. in antiquity the metals were used as money in bulk; that is, the amount was weighed at each transaction and the quality was tested whenever there was doubt.6 in countries industrially backward, payments are still made in this manner. for some time after the discovery of gold in calfornia, gold dust was roughly measured out on the thumbnail. in shipments of goldto-dayby bankers to settle international balances, metal may be in the form of bars that bear the mark of somewell-knownbanking house. in all of the cases of this kind the gold is money in fact, but not by virtue of any act of government. the metal is simply a valuable good, the receiver of which values it according to its weight and fineness. this is true even when the government mint, for a small charge, tests and stamps the bars at the request of citizens. the money-materialin its commodity uses. in the case of acommodity-money,such as gold, the problem of its value as bullion is the same as that of the value of pig iron or of zinc, of meat or of potatoes. the value of gold as bullion and its value as money are kept in equilibrium by choice and by substitution.

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