338 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
the wants of the people ; in storing, he must consider preservation of the goods ; in exchanging, he must consider the value of the goods ; in delivering, he must consider the distribution of the goods to his customers ; and in considering gains he must consider the total cost to himself and compare it with the amount received, which may show profit or loss.
Money — This leads us to the fourth element of commerce, i. e., money, which, as one of the commodities, has to be considered as a value in relation to the other commodities, which are goods. Money consists of gold, silver, subsidiary coins, bank-notes, and credits. In different stages of culture different articles have been used as money, such as shells, wampum, peltries, tobacco, and cattle ; but in modern civilization the five kinds of money are almost universal.
It has already been considered important that the value of money should be permanent, so far as this can be secured by human agencies. If we consider long periods of time, this has never been accomplished. The device which the more advanced nations have adopted is to make either gold or silver or both, at a fixed ratio, the measure of value, and then by statute to provide that subsidiary coins should be issued by the government. It is provided further that bank-notes should be made exchangeable with coin at the option of the holder who presents them for pay- ment; but in modern times credits are very largely used in transactions, so that much of the money used in commerce is of this nature.
The business of the banker is the handling of money for a profit. He must therefore be a capitalist — must have money of his own, — and the amount of money or credit of others which he handles, other things being equal, will depend on the amount of capital which he has invested either directly in banking or as security which it affords to the public in his transactions. In modern business much is transacted by credits, which are a kind of money, and the capital of the banker is held by his customers
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