MONEY AND PRICES




CHAPTER 3

NATURE, USE, AND COINAGE OF MONEY

§ 1. Origin of money. § 2. Qualities of the original money-goods.
§ 3. Industrial changes and the forms of money. § 4. The precious
metals as money. § 5. Gold-using countries. § 6. Varying extent of
the use of money. § 7. Money defined and reviewed. § 8. Metal money
without or with coinage. § 9. Technical features of coinage. § 10.
Seigniorage defined.


§ 1. #Origin of money#. Everywhere in the world where the beginnings
of regular trade have appeared, some one of the articles of trade soon
has come to be taken by many traders who did not expect to keep or use
it themselves, but to pass it along in another trade.[1] This made it
money, for money is whatever comes to be used as a general price-good.
The character of a _general_ price good clearly distinguishes money
from goods bought and sold by a particular class of merchants, such
as grain, cattle, etc., to be sold again. It is only in so far as a
particular good comes to be taken by persons not specially dealing in
it, taken for the purpose of using it as a price-good to get something
else which they desire, that a thing has the character of money. The
thing called money thus is a durative good passing from hand to hand