The present is a composite photograph of all the yesterdays which the human race has counted since it began a civilized career. All the thought, improvement, invention, advancement, and exaltation of mankind evolved during its march through the millions of myriads of yesterdays are concentrated, focused, in the present; and our To-day, analyzed, is only a portrait in miniature of an aggregate Yesterday. Our industries, social life, economics-even our fallacies in finance—are merely a repetition of those of former generations, with additions, amendments, and advancements. Thus, while history repeats itself, it also modifies or magnifies itself in various parts. It embel

11 President's address at the last meeting of the Historical Society. This appeared in the February number of the North American Review, with the permission of the editor of which it is reprinted here, in accordance with the statutory regulation,

lishes or it tones down, represses or intensifies here and there, as human prejudice or desire may dictate. But nowhere do we read of a different air or water in ancient times as supporters of human life-from that which we breathe and drink to-day. There has been, then, no abrupt repeal, change, or amendment to natural laws during the mighty marches of the years and centuries across this world of ours since it first trembled in elemental space. The laws of light, of sound, of gravitation and cohesion, remain potent, exacting, and inexorable as when the revolution of the spheres began and the light of day first flooded the universe with its vivifying effulgence. Under the domination of these relentless laws in a great kindergarten the family of Man has been for thousands of years living and learning and repeating lessons. Until the art of printing came to embalm knowledge and perpetuate it, the learning of each generation was entombed almost wholly with those who developed it. Legends, manuscripts, and traditions transmitted only a modicum of the accumulated lore; and the greater volumes of experience and achievement were hidden in the grave with their authors. Nevertheless, certain of those ideas most essential to the advancement and elevation of the social status were so thoroughly esteemed, debated, and written out, that we, as the heirs of the intellectual wealth of all preceding time, now hoard them in libraries and treasure them in our memories. But we are merely trustees, and as such it is our duty to conserve and bequeath that inheritance to our descendants with as much useful increment as we are competent to evolve or produce, as to each integral part thereof. And as trade is the forerunner of civilization, and commerce its promoter and educator, this age is obligated to the future to improve the old and invent new methods for facilitating exchanges all the world over.

In a barbaric state, barter existed. Direct exchanges of goods for goods obtained. Then, emerging from tribal relations, man instituted various media of exchanges.

First, cattle were money. Then came flocks of sheep and goats. The large cattle-owner was the capitalist. The word "capital" coming from caput, a head, and the word. "pecuniary" from pecus, a flock, illustrate the fact that the basic idea of money was value, both inherent and relative. Later on silver and gold became money. But for centuries they were not coined. Both metals were used to mediate exchanges. But neither of them bore any other marking or certification than that given by the goldsmith or the assayer, who merely verified the weight and fineness. His legend on the lump or ingot of bullion assured the trading public as to its purity and gravity. But standard economists never claim that attestation of fineness and weight, either by an assay office in ancient or by a government mint in modern times, adds value to the metals; though all agree that it increases the facility with which they may measure values and mediate the exchange of commodities.

Aristotle, who wrote in the fourth century before Christ, had a clearer idea of the character and functions of money, even in that early morning time of commerce, than many statesmen at this high noon of international trade seem to entertain. And that pagan philosopher said:

Money is an intermediary commodity designed to facilitate an exchange of two other commodities."

And Zenophon, writing of Athens a hundred years later, and showing its advantages over other markets, says:

"In most of the other cities a trader is obliged to take commodities in return for those he brings, because the money used in them has not much credit outside; with us Athenians, on the contrary, he takes his pay in ready money, which, of all negotiable articles, is the safest and most convenient, as it is secured in all countries, and, besides, it always brings back something to its master, when the latter judges proper to dispose of it."

Thus Aristotle saw the necessity of a commodity value in the medium of exchange, and Xenophon demonstrated

the importance of a general and unfluctuating purchasing power of value in money, to render it universally useful in the facilitation of domestic and foreign exchanges.

Thus we come to, What is value? Aristotle and the Roman lawyers among the ancient; and Adam Smith, Whately, Say, and Perry, with a multitude of other modern economists, have declared that value consists in EXCHANGEABILITY. And McLeod says:

"And what does exchangeability depend upon? If I offer something for sale, what is necessary in order that it should be sold? Simply that someone else should desire and demand it. The sole origin, source and cause of value is human desire; when there is a demand for things, they have value. When supply remains stationary and the demand increases, the value increases; when the demand decreases, the value decreases, and when the demand ceases altogether, the value is altogether gone."

The currency of a country, therefore, must be always exchangeable for those things which its people desire and demand, and the currency itself must be desired and demanded by those who have the things to sell. The commodity seller buys money; and the commodity buyer sells money. Each seeks the highest quality in that which he buys, because with it he satisfies a demand; and in every legitimate exchange there are two demands and two satisfactions. In times of business depression money circulates cautiously and slowly, because people repress desires for many commodities which under usual commercial conditions they gratify. And thus demand for those goods decreases and their values decline. There are many Americans to-day who have their money hoarded merely because they are afraid to indulge in expenditures which, during a period of redundant circulation, they regarded as absolutely necessary to their daily comfort. Repressing desires, they have diminished or destroyed demand in many lines of goods, and yet an active number of citizens declare that the depression is caused solely by

an inadequate per capita circulation of money. Generally those citizens, however, while talking of a per capita circulation, are, no doubt, really thinking of a per capita distribution. But in the distribution of money each person can legitimately get only so much as he can honestly buy, either with a personal service or an exchangeable property or commodity. Each person can get money who has something to sell which some other person desires and demands. It makes no difference how plentifnl the money supply may be: if one has no exchangeable service or commodity to offer which other persons desire to buy, he will get none of it.

To illustrate. In a community of 1,000 there may be found per capita circulation of $100. Investigation, however, proves that one citizen has $75,000, another $10,000, and the remaining 998 have only an average of about $15 each. And yet effusive statesmen, posing as the friends of the poor man, pathetically plead for an increased per capita circulation, as the only certain panacea for poverty, penury, and want everywhere. But these emotional fiatists never tell how any person, who has nothing exchangeable to offer therefor, is to get his per capita share. These hysterical publicists frequently indulge in economic paroxysms which, nearly always, result in attempts to promote the public weal by enactment, and in endeavors to provide prosperity by embodying fallacies in the forms of law. They totally ignore the fact that exchangeable things are necessary to circulate money-things desired, demanded, and, therefore valuable. They forget, seemingly, that there is no need of value measures when and where there are no values to measure.

Among the drought-stricken homesteaders in some parts of the sub-arid regions of Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, there are for sale to-day no edible commodities; and all the gold coin of the earth given to those unfortunates on the famine frontier, upon condition that it shall be used only in purchasing food grown among them