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READINGS IN MONEY AND BANKING

       *       *       *       *       *

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO. DALLAS

ATLANTA. SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO. LIMITED

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TORONTO

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READINGS IN MONEY AND BANKING

Selected And Adapted

by

CHESTER ARTHUR PHILLIPS

Assistant Professor of Economics in Dartmouth College
and Assistant Professor of Banking in the Amos
Tuck School of Administration and Finance







New York
The Macmillan Company
1921
All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Copyright 1916
By the Macmillan Company

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1916.

Ferris Printing Company
New York City





PREFACE


Designed mainly for class room use in connection with one of the
introductory manuals on the subject of Money and Banking or of Money and
Currency, this volume, _in itself_, lays no claim to completeness. Where
its use is contemplated the problems of emphasis and proportion are,
accordingly, to be solved by the selection of one or another of the
available texts, or by the choice of supplementary lecture topics and
materials. The contents of the introductory manuals are so divergent in
character as to render possible combinations of text and readings that
will include, it is hoped, matter of such range and variety as may be
desired.

Fullness of treatment has been attempted, however, in the chapters
dealing with the important recent developments in the "mechanism of
exchange," and my aim has been throughout to select and, in many
instances, to adapt with a view to meeting the wants of those who are
interested chiefly in the modern phases of the subject.

For valuable suggestions in the preparation of the volume I am greatly
indebted to Professors F. H. Dixon and G. R. Wicker and Mr. J. M.
Shortliffe of Dartmouth, Professor Hastings Lyon of Columbia, Professor
E. E. Day of Harvard, and to my former teacher, Professor F. R.
Fairchild of Yale. I desire also to mention my great obligation to
authors and publishers who alike have generously permitted the
reproduction of copyrighted material.

CHESTER ARTHUR PHILLIPS.

Dartmouth College,
Hanover, N. H., July, 1916.




TABLE OF CONTENTS


   CHAPTER                                                       PAGE

        I THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTIONS OF MONEY                         1

       II THE EARLY HISTORY OF MONEY                               10

      III QUALITIES OF THE MATERIAL OF MONEY                       18

       IV LEGAL TENDER                                             26

        V THE GREENBACK ISSUES                                     33

       VI INTERNATIONAL BIMETALLISM                                71

      VII THE SILVER QUESTION IN THE UNITED STATES                 82

     VIII INDEX NUMBERS                                           115

       IX BANKING OPERATIONS AND ACCOUNTS                         121

        X THE USE OF CREDIT INSTRUMENTS IN PAYMENTS
          IN THE UNITED STATES                                    150

       XI A SYMPOSIUM ON THE RELATION BETWEEN MONEY
          AND GENERAL PRICES                                      159

      XII THE GOLD EXCHANGE STANDARD                              213

     XIII A PLAN FOR A COMPENSATED DOLLAR                         229

      XIV MONETARY SYSTEMS OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES                   246

       XV THE NATURE AND FUNCTIONS OF TRUST COMPANIES             256

      XVI SAVINGS BANKS                                           270

     XVII DOMESTIC EXCHANGE                                       290

    XVIII FOREIGN EXCHANGE                                        305

      XIX CLEARING HOUSES                                         355

       XX STATE BANKS AND TRUST COMPANIES SINCE THE PASSAGE
          OF THE NATIONAL BANK ACT                                381

      XXI THE CANADIAN BANKING SYSTEM                             406

     XXII THE ENGLISH BANKING SYSTEM                              435

    XXIII THE SCOTCH BANKS                                        474

     XXIV THE FRENCH BANKING SYSTEM                               488

      XXV THE GERMAN BANKING SYSTEM                               526

     XXVI BANKING IN SOUTH AMERICA                                559

    XXVII AGRICULTURAL CREDIT IN THE UNITED STATES                575

   XXVIII THE CONCENTRATION OF CONTROL OF MONEY AND CREDIT        606

     XXIX CRISES                                                  627

      XXX THE WEAKNESSES OF OUR BANKING SYSTEM PRIOR TO
          THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM         672

     XXXI THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM                              723

    XXXII THE EUROPEAN WAR IN RELATION TO MONEY,
          BANKING AND FINANCE                                     797

          APPENDICES                                              830




READINGS IN MONEY AND BANKING




CHAPTER I

THE ORIGIN AND FUNCTIONS OF MONEY

[1]In order to understand the manifold functions of a Circulating
Medium, there is no better way than to consider what are the principal
inconveniences which we should experience if we had not such a medium.
The first and most obvious would be the want of a common measure for
values of different sorts. If a tailor had only coats, and wanted to buy
bread or a horse, it would be very troublesome to ascertain how much
bread he ought to obtain for a coat, or how many coats he should give
for a horse. The calculation must be recommenced on different data,
every time he bartered his coats for a different kind of article; and
there could be no current price, or regular quotations of value. Whereas
now each thing has a current price in money, and he gets over all
difficulties by reckoning his coat at L4 or L5, and a four-pound loaf at
6_d._ or 7_d_. As it is much easier to compare different lengths by
expressing them in a common language of feet and inches, so it is much
easier to compare values by means of a common language of pounds,
shillings, and pence. In no other way can values be arranged one above
another in a scale: in no other can a person conveniently calculate the
sum of his possessions; and it is easier to ascertain and remember the
relations of many things to one thing, than their innumerable cross
relations with one another. This advantage of having a common language
in which values may be expressed, is, even by itself, so important, that
some such mode of expressing and computing them would probably be used
even if a pound or a shilling did not express any real thing, but a mere
unit of calculation. It is said that there are African tribes in which
this somewhat artificial contrivance actually prevails. They calculate
the value of things in a sort of money of account, called macutes. They
say, one thing is worth ten macutes, another fifteen, another twenty.
There is no real thing called a macute: it is a conventional unit, for
the more convenient comparison of things with one another.

This advantage, however, forms but an inconsiderable part of the
economical benefits derived from the use of money. The inconveniences of
barter are so great, that without some more commodious means of
effecting exchanges, the division of employments could hardly have been
carried to any considerable extent. A tailor, who had nothing but coats,
might starve before he could find any person having bread to sell who
wanted a coat: besides, he would not want as much bread at a time as
would be worth a coat, and the coat could not be divided. Every person,
therefore, would at all times hasten to dispose of his commodity in
exchange for anything which, though it might not be fitted to his own
immediate wants, was in great and general demand, and easily divisible,
so that he might be sure of being able to purchase with it, whatever was
offered for sale. The primary necessaries of life possess these
properties in a high degree. Bread is extremely divisible, and an object
of universal desire. Still, this is not the sort of thing required: for,
of food, unless in expectation of a scarcity, no one wishes to possess
more at once than is wanted for immediate consumption; so that a person
is never sure of finding an immediate purchaser for articles of food;
and unless soon disposed of, most of them perish. The thing which people
would select to keep by them for making purchases, must be one which,
besides being divisible, and generally desired, does not deteriorate by
keeping. This reduces the choice to a small number of articles.

By a tacit concurrence, almost all nations, at a very early period,
fixed upon certain metals, and especially gold and silver, to serve this
purpose. No other substances unite the necessary qualities in so great a
degree, with so many subordinate advantages. Next to food and clothing,
and in some climates even before clothing, the strongest inclination in
a rude state of society is for personal ornament, and for the kind of
distinction which is obtained by rarity or costliness in such ornaments.
After the immediate necessities of life were satisfied, every one was
eager to accumulate as great a store as possible of things at once
costly and ornamental; which were chiefly gold, silver, and jewels.
These were the things which it most pleased every one to possess, and
which there was most certainty of finding others willing to receive in
exchange for any kind of produce. They were among the most imperishable
of all substances. They were also portable, and containing great value
in small bulk, were easily hid; a consideration of much importance in an
age of insecurity. Jewels are inferior to gold and silver in the quality
of divisibility; and are of very various qualities, not to be accurately
discriminated without great trouble. Gold and silver are eminently
divisible, and when pure, always of the same quality; and their purity
may be ascertained and certified by a public authority.

Accordingly, though furs have been employed as money in some countries,
cattle in others, in Chinese Tartary cubes of tea closely pressed
together, the shells called cowries on the coast of Western Africa, and
in Abyssinia at this day blocks of rock salt; though even of metals, the
less costly have sometimes been chosen, as iron in Lacedaemon from
ascetic policy, copper in the early Roman republic from the poverty of
the people; gold and silver have been generally preferred by nations
which were able to obtain them, either by industry, commerce, or
conquest. To the qualities which originally recommended them, another
came to be added, the importance of which only unfolded itself by
degrees. Of all commodities, they are among the least influenced by any
of the causes which produce fluctuations of value. They fluctuate less
than almost any other things in their cost of production. And from their
durability, the total quantity in existence is at all times so great in
proportion to the annual supply, that the effect on value even of a
change in the cost of production is not sudden: a very long time being
required to diminish materially the quantity in existence, and even to
increase it very greatly not being a rapid process. Gold and silver,
therefore, are more fit than any other commodity to be the subject of
engagements for receiving or paying a given quantity at some distant
period. If the engagement were made in corn, a failure of crops might
increase the burthen of the payment in one year to fourfold what was
intended, or an exuberant harvest sink it in another to one-fourth. If
stipulated in cloth, some manufacturing invention might permanently
reduce the payment to a tenth of its original value. Such things have
occurred even in the case of payments stipulated in gold and silver; but
the great fall of their value after the discovery of America, is, as
yet, the only authenticated instance; and in this case the change was
extremely gradual, being spread over a period of many years.

When gold and silver had become virtually a medium of exchange, by
becoming the things for which people generally sold, and with which they
generally bought, whatever they had to sell or to buy; the contrivance
of coining obviously suggested itself. By this process the metal was
divided into convenient portions, of any degree of smallness, and
bearing a recognized proportion to one another; and the trouble was
saved of weighing and assaying at every change of possessors, an
inconvenience which on the occasion of small purchases would soon have
become insupportable. Governments found it their interest to take the
operation into their own hands, and to interdict all coining by private
persons; indeed, their guarantee was often the only one which would have
been relied on, a reliance however which very often it ill deserved;
profligate governments having until a very modern period seldom
scrupled, for the sake of robbing their creditors, to confer on all
other debtors a licence to rob theirs, by the shallow and impudent
artifice of lowering the standard; that least covert of all modes of
knavery, which consists in calling a shilling a pound, that a debt of a
hundred pounds may be cancelled by the payment of a hundred shillings.
It would have been as simple a plan, and would have answered the purpose
as well, to have enacted that "a hundred" should always be interpreted
to mean five, which would have effected the same reduction in all
pecuniary contracts, and would not have been at all more shameless. Such
strokes of policy have not wholly ceased to be recommended, but they
have ceased to be practised; except occasionally through the medium of
paper money, in which case the character of the transaction, from the
greater obscurity of the subject, is a little less barefaced.

Money, when its use has grown habitual, is the medium through which the
incomes of the different members of the community are distributed to
them, and the measure by which they estimate their possessions. As it is
always by means of money that people provide for their different
necessities, there grows up in their minds a powerful association
leading them to regard money as wealth in a more peculiar sense than any
other article; and even those who pass their lives in the production of
the most useful objects, acquire the habit of regarding those objects as
chiefly important by their capacity of being exchanged for money. A
person who parts with money to obtain commodities, unless he intends to
sell them, appears to the imagination to be making a worse bargain than
a person who parts with commodities to get money; the one seems to be
spending his means, the other adding to them. Illusions which, though
now in some measure dispelled, were long powerful enough to overmaster
the mind of every politician, both speculative and practical, in Europe.

It must be evident, however, that the mere introduction of a particular
mode of exchanging things for one another, by first exchanging a thing
for money, and then exchanging the money for something else, makes no
difference in the essential character of transactions. It is not with
money that things are really purchased. Nobody's income (except that of
the gold or silver miner) is derived from the precious metals. The
pounds or shillings which a person receives weekly or yearly, are not
what constitutes his income; they are a sort of tickets or orders which
he can present for payment at any shop he pleases, and which entitle him
to receive a certain value of any commodity that he makes choice of. The
farmer pays his laborers and his landlord in these tickets, as the most
convenient plan for himself and them; but their real income is their
share of his corn, cattle, and hay, and it makes no essential difference
whether he distributes it to them directly or sells it for them and
gives them the price; but as they would have to sell it for money if he
did not, and he is a seller at any rate, it best suits the purposes of
all, that he should sell their share along with his own, and leave the
laborers more leisure for work and the landlord for being idle. The
capitalists, except those who are producers of the precious metals,
derive no part of their income from those metals, since they only get
them by buying them with their own produce: while all other persons have
their incomes paid to them by the capitalists, or by those who have
received payment from the capitalists, and as the capitalists have
nothing, from the first, except their produce, it is that and nothing
else which supplies all incomes furnished by them. There cannot, in
short, be intrinsically a more insignificant thing, in the economy of
society, than money; except in the character of a contrivance for
sparing time and labor. It is a machine for doing quickly and
commodiously, what would be done, though less quickly and commodiously,
without it: and like many other kinds of machinery, it only exerts a
distinct and independent influence of its own when it gets out of order.

The introduction of money does not interfere with the operation of any
of the Laws of Value.... The reasons which make the temporary or market
value of things depend on the demand and supply, and their average and
permanent values upon their cost of production, are as applicable to a
money system as to a system of barter. Things which by barter would
exchange for one another, will, if sold for money, sell for an equal
amount of it, and so will exchange for one another still, though the
process of exchanging them will consist of two operations instead of
only one. The relations of commodities to one another remain unaltered
by money: the only new relation introduced, is their relation to money
itself; how much or how little money they will exchange for; in other
words, how the Exchange Value of money itself is determined. And this is
not a question of any difficulty, when the illusion is dispelled, which
caused money to be looked upon as a peculiar thing, not governed by the
same laws as other things. Money is a commodity, and its value is
determined like that of other commodities, temporarily by demand and
supply, permanently and on the average by cost of production.

In the foregoing,[2] attention has been directed mainly to the two
functions of money known (1) as the Standard or Common Denominator of
Value, and (2) as the Medium of Exchange. Concerning transactions begun
and ended on the spot nothing more need be said; but the fact of
contracts over a period of time introduces an important element--the
time element. Whenever a contract is made covering a period of time,
within which serious changes in the economic world may take place, then
difficulties may arise as to what is a just standard of payments.
Various articles might serve equally well as a standard for exchanges
performed on the spot, but it is not so when any one article is chosen
as a standard for deferred payments. Without much regard to theory, the
world has in fact used the same standard for transactions whether
settled on the spot, or whether extending over a period of time.

In order to work with perfection as a standard for deferred payments,
the article chosen as that standard should place both debtors and
creditors in exactly the same absolute, and the same relative, position
to each other at the end of a contract that they occupied at its
beginning; this implies that the chosen article should maintain the same
exchange value in relation to goods, rents, and the wages of labour at
the end as at the beginning of the contract, and it implies that the
borrower and lender should preserve the same relative position as
regards their fellow producers and consumers at the later as at the
earlier point of time, and that they have not changed this relation, one
at the loss of the other. This makes demands which any article that can
be suggested as a standard cannot satisfy. And yet it is a practical
necessity of society that some one article should in fact be selected as
the standard. The business world has thus been forced to find some
commodity which--while admittedly never capable of perfection--provides
more nearly than anything else all the essentials of a desirable
standard.

The causes which may bring about changes in the relations between goods
and labor, on the one side, and the standard, on the other, are
various. We may, for instance, compare wheat with the existing gold
standard. The quantity of gold for which the wheat will exchange is its
price. As wheat falls in value relatively to gold, it exchanges for less
gold, that is, its price falls; or, _vice versa_, gold exchanges for
more wheat, and relatively to wheat gold has risen. As one goes up, the
other term in the ratio necessarily goes down; just as certainly as a
rise in one end of a plank balanced on a log necessitates a fall in the
other end of the plank. Therefore, changes in prices can be caused by
forces affecting either the gold side or the wheat side of the ratio; by
forces affecting either the money standard or the goods compared with
that standard. Consequences of importance follow from this explanation.
First suppose that commodities and labor remain unchanged in their
production and reward, respectively; then, anything affecting the supply
of and demand for gold will affect in general the value of gold in
comparison with goods and labor. Or, second, if we suppose an
equilibrium between the demand for and supply of gold, then, prices and
wages can be affected also by anything affecting the cost of obtaining
goods or labor. It is one-sided to look for changes in prices solely
from causes touching gold, or one term of the price ratio. If, however,
it should be desired that prices should remain stationary, then this can
be brought about only by finding for the standard an article that would
automatically move in extent, and in the proper compensating direction,
so as to meet any changes in value arising not only from causes
affecting itself, but also from causes affecting labor and the vast
number of goods that may be quoted in price. No commodity ever existed
which could thus move in value.

During long periods of time--within which gains in mechanical skill and
invention, revolutions in political and social habits, changes in taste
or fashion, settlement of new countries, opening of new markets, may
take place--great alterations in the value of the standard may occur
wholly from natural causes affecting the commodity side of the price
ratio. And yet, in default of a perfect standard, persons who borrow and
lend create debts and obligations expressed in terms of that article
which has been adopted as the standard by the concurring habits of the
commercial community of which they form a part. It should be understood,
whenever men enter into obligations reaching over a period of time, that
a necessary part of the risks involved in this undertaking is the
possibility of an alteration in the exchange values of goods, on the one
hand, and in the standard metal on the other, due to industrial changes
and natural causes. This is one of the risks which belong to individual
enterprise, differing in no way from other possibilities of gain and
loss. For instance, prices rose, as indicated by an index number of 100
in 1860 to an index number of 216 in 1865. Therefore, in the United
States, in this period of rising prices the creditor lost and the debtor
gained. On the other hand, from 1865 to 1878, prices fell from 216 to
101, and in this period of falling prices the creditor gained and the
debtor lost. It is to be observed, however, that these figures refer to
actual quotations of prices during the fluctuations of our paper money.
But it is evident in such movements as these, that parties to a
time-contract must take their own chances of changes; and indeed it is
much more wholesome that they should do so.

It should be kept well in mind that it is not a proper function of
government to step in and save men from the ordinary risks of trade and
industry. It goes without saying that if changes in the value of the
standard due to natural causes take place during the continuance of a
contract, it is not the business of government to indemnify either party
to the contract. This is a matter on which every individual who enters
into time obligations must bear his own responsibility.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] John Stuart Mill, _Principles of Political Economy_, Vol. II, pp.
17-23.

[2] Adapted from _The Report of the Commission of the Indianapolis
Convention_, pp. 92, 93, 103, 104. The University of Chicago Press,
1898.




CHAPTER II

THE EARLY HISTORY OF MONEY

[3]Living in civilized communities, and accustomed to the use of coined
metallic money, we learn to identify money with gold and silver; hence
spring hurtful and insidious fallacies. It is always useful, therefore,
to be reminded of the truth, so well stated by Turgot, that every kind
of merchandise has the two properties of measuring value and
transferring value. It is entirely a question of degree what commodities
will in any given state of society form the most convenient currency,
and this truth will be best impressed upon us by a brief consideration
of the very numerous things which have at one time or other been
employed as money. Though there are many numismatists and many political
economists, the natural history of money is almost a virgin subject,
upon which I should like to dilate; but the narrow limits of my space
forbid me from attempting more than a brief sketch of the many
interesting facts which may be collected.


CURRENCY IN THE HUNTING STATE

Perhaps the most rudimentary state of industry is that in which
subsistence is gained by hunting wild animals. The proceeds of the chase
would, in such a state, be the property of most generally recognized
value. The meat of the animals captured would, indeed, be too perishable
in nature to be hoarded or often exchanged; but it is otherwise with the
skins, which, being preserved and valued for clothing, became one of the
earliest materials of currency. Accordingly, there is abundant evidence
that furs or skins were employed as money in many ancient nations. They
serve this purpose to the present day in some parts of the world.

In the book of Job (ii, 4) we read, "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man
hath will he give for his life"; a statement clearly implying that skins
were taken as the representative of value among the ancient Oriental
nations. Etymological research shows that the same may be said of the
northern nations from the earliest times. In the Esthonian language the
word _raha_ generally signifies money, but its equivalent in the kindred
Lappish tongue has not yet altogether lost the original meaning of skin
or fur. Leather money is said to have circulated in Russia as late as
the reign of Peter the Great, and it is worthy of notice, that classical
writers have recorded traditions to the effect that the earliest
currency used at Rome, Lacedaemon, and Carthage, was formed of leather.

We need not go back, however, to such early times to study the use of
rude currencies. In the traffic of the Hudson's Bay Company with the
North American Indians, furs, in spite of their differences of quality
and size, long formed the medium of exchange. It is very instructive,
and corroborative of the previous evidence to find that even after the
use of coin had become common among the Indians the skin was still
commonly used as the money of account. Thus Whymper says, "a gun,
nominally worth about forty shillings, bought twenty'skins.' This term
is the old one employed by the company. One skin (beaver) is supposed to
be worth two shillings, and it represents two marten, and so on. You
heard a great deal about'skins' at Fort Yukon, as the workmen were also
charged for clothing, etc., in this way."


CURRENCY IN THE PASTORAL STATE

In the next higher stage of civilization, the pastoral state, sheep and
cattle naturally form the most valuable and negotiable kind of property.
They are easily transferable, convey themselves about, and can be kept
for many years, so that they readily perform some of the functions of
money.

We have abundance of evidence, traditional, written, and etymological,
to show this. In the Homeric poems oxen are distinctly and repeatedly
mentioned as the commodity in terms of which other objects are valued.
The arms of Diomed are stated to be worth nine oxen, and are compared
with those of Glaucos, worth one hundred. The tripod, the first prize
for wrestlers in the 23rd Iliad, was valued at twelve oxen, and a woman
captive, skilled in industry, at four. It is peculiarly interesting to
find oxen thus used as the common measure of value, because from other
passages it is probable, as already mentioned, that the precious metals,
though as yet uncoined, were used as a store of value, and occasionally
as a medium of exchange. The several functions of money were thus
clearly performed by different commodities at this early period.

In several languages the name for money is identical with that of some
kind of cattle or domesticated animal. It is generally allowed that
_pecunia_, the Latin word for money, is derived from _pecus_, cattle.
From the Agamemnon of Aeschylus we learn that the figure of an ox was the
sign first impressed upon coins, and the same is said to have been the
case with the earliest issues of the Roman _As_. Numismatic researches
fail to bear out these traditions, which were probably invented to
explain the connection between the name of the coin and the animal. A
corresponding connection between these notions may be detected in much
more modern languages. Our common expression for the payment of a sum of
money is _fee_, which is nothing but the Anglo-Saxon _feoh_, meaning
alike money and cattle, a word cognate with the German _vieh_, which
still bears only the original meaning of cattle.

In the ancient German codes of law, fines and penalties are actually
defined in terms of live-stock. In the Zend Avesta, as Professor
Theodores... informs me, the scale of rewards to be paid to physicians
is carefully stated, and in every case the fee consists in some sort of
cattle. The fifth and sixth lectures in Sir H. S. Maine's most
interesting work on _The Early History of Institutions_, which has just
been published, are full of curious information showing the importance
of live-stock in a primitive state of society. Being counted by the
head, the kine was called capitale, whence the economical term capital,
the law term chattel, and our common name cattle.

In countries where slaves form one of the most common and valuable
possessions, it is quite natural that they should serve as the medium
of exchange like cattle. Pausanias mentions their use in this way, and
in Central Africa and some other places where slavery still flourishes,
they are the medium of exchange along with cattle and ivory tusks.
According to Earl's account of New Guinea, there is in that island a
large traffic in slaves, and a slave forms the unit of value. Even in
England slaves are believed to have been exchanged at one time in the
manner of money.


ARTICLES OF ORNAMENT AS CURRENCY

A passion for personal adornment is one of the most primitive and
powerful instincts of the human race, and as articles used for such
purposes would be durable, universally esteemed, and easily
transferable, it is natural that they should be circulated as money. The
_wampumpeag_ of the North American Indians is a case in point, as it
certainly served as jewellery. It consisted of beads made of the ends of
black and white shells, rubbed down and polished, and then strung into
belts or necklaces, which were valued according to their length, and
also according to their color and luster, a foot of black _peag_ being
worth two feet of white _peag_. It was so well established as currency
among the natives that the Court of Massachusetts ordered in 1649, that
it should be received in the payment of debts among settlers to the
amount of forty shillings. It is curious to learn, too, that just as
European misers hoard up gold and silver coins, the richer Indian chiefs
secrete piles of wampum beads, having no better means of investing their
superfluous wealth.

Exactly analogous to this North American currency, is that of the cowry
shells, which, under one name or another--_chamgos_, _zimbis_, _bouges_,
_porcelanes_, etc.--have long been used in the East Indies as small
money. In British India, Siam,