Principles Of Political Economy
- Автор: Mill John Stuart
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Жанр: Политика
Электронная книга - «Principles Of Political Economy». Краткое содержание книги:
Beside discussing descriptive issues such as which nations tended to benefit more in a system of trade based on comparative advantage (Mill's answer: those with more elastic demands for other countries' goods), the work also discussed normative issues such as ideal systems of political economy, critiquing proposed systems such as communism and socialism.
Along with A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy established Mill's reputation as a leading public intellectual. Mill's sympathetic attitude in this work and in other essays toward contemporary socialism, particularly Fourierism, earned him esteem from the working class as one of their intellectual champions.
In order that the alternate movements of silver and gold to the mint for coinage may be seen, there is appended a statement of the coinage[239] during the above periods, which well shows the effects of Gresham's law.
Ratio in the mint and in the market. Period. Gold coinage. Silver dollars coined. 1:15 (silver lower in market) 1792-1834 $11,825,890 $36,275,077 1:15.98 (gold lower in market) 1834-1853 224,965,730 42,936,294 1:15.98 (gold lower in market) 1853-1873 544,864,921 5,538,948 Single gold standard. 1873-1878 166,253,816 ........ 1:15.98 (silver lower, but no free coinage) 1878-1883 354,019,865 147,255,899From this it will be seen that there has been an enforced coinage by the Treasury, of almost twice as many silver dollars since 1878 as were coined in all the history of the mint before, since the establishment of the Government.
It may, perhaps, be asked why the silver dollar of 412-½ grains, being worth intrinsically only from 86 to 89 cents, does not depreciate to that value. The Government buys the silver, owns the coin, and holds all that it can not induce the public to receive voluntarily; so that but a part of the total coinage is out of the Treasury. And most of the coins issued are returned for deposit and silver certificates received in return. There being no free coinage, and no greater amount in circulation than satisfies the demand for change, instead of small bills, the dollar-pieces will circulate at their full value, on the principle of subsidiary coin, even though overvalued. And the silver certificates practically go through a process of constant redemption by being received for customs dues equally with gold. When they become too great in quantity to be needed for such purposes, then we may look for the depreciation with good reason.[240]
There are, then, the following kinds of legal tender in the United States in 1884: (1) Gold coins (if not below tolerance); (2) the silver dollar of 412-½ grains; (3) United States notes (except for customs and interest on the public debt); (4) subsidiary silver coinage, to the amount of five dollars; and (5) minor coins, to the amount of twenty-five cents.
The question of a double standard has provoked no little vehement discussion and has called forth a considerable literature since the fall of silver in 1876. A body of opinion exists, best represented in this country by F. A. Walker and S. D. Horton, that the relative values of gold and silver may be kept unchanged, in spite of all natural causes, by the force of law, which, provided that enough countries join in the plan, shall fix the ratio of exchange in the coinage for all great commercial countries, and by this means keep the coinage ratio equivalent to the bullion ratio. The difficulty with this scheme, even if it were wholly sufficient, has thus far been in the obstacles to international agreement. After several international monetary conferences, in 1867, 1878, and 1881, the project seems now to have been practically abandoned by all except the most sanguine. (For a fuller list of authorities on bimetallism, see Appendix I.)
Chapter VIII. Of Credit, As A Substitute For Money.
§ 1. Credit not a creation but a Transfer of the means of Production.
Credit has a great, but not, as many people seem to suppose, a magical power; it can not make something out of nothing. How often is an extension of credit talked of as equivalent to a creation of capital, or as if credit actually were capital! It seems strange that there should be any need to point out that, credit being only permission to use the capital of another person, the means of production can not be increased by it, but only transferred. If the borrower's means of production and of employing labor are increased by the credit given him, the lender's are as much diminished. The same sum can not be used as capital both by the owner and also by the person to whom it is lent; it can not supply its entire value in wages, tools, and materials, to two sets of laborers at once. It is true that the capital which A has borrowed from B, and makes use of in his business, still forms a part of the wealth of B for other purposes; he can enter into arrangements in reliance on it, and can borrow, when needful, an equivalent sum on the security of it; so that to a superficial eye it might seem as if both B and A had the use of it at once. But the smallest consideration will show that, when B has parted with his capital to A, the use of it as capital rests with A alone, and that B has no other service from it than in so far as his ultimate claim upon it serves him to obtain the use of another capital from a third person, C.
§ 2. In what manner it assists Production.
But, though credit is never anything more than a transfer of capital from hand to hand, it is generally, and naturally, a transfer to hands more competent to employ the capital efficiently in production. If there were no such thing as credit, or if, from general insecurity and want of confidence, it were scantily practiced, many persons who possess more or less of capital, but who from their occupations, or for want of the necessary skill and knowledge, can not personally superintend its employment, would derive no benefit from it: their funds would either lie idle, or would be, perhaps, wasted and annihilated in unskillful attempts to make them yield a profit. All this capital is now lent at interest, and made available for production. Capital thus circumstanced forms a large portion of the productive resources of any commercial country, and is naturally attracted to those producers or traders who, being in the greatest business, have the means of employing it to most advantage, because such are both the most desirous to obtain it and able to give the best security. Although, therefore, the productive funds of the country are not increased by credit, they are called into a more complete state of productive activity. As the confidence on which credit is grounded extends itself, means are developed by which even the smallest portions of capital, the sums which each person keeps by him to meet contingencies, are made available for productive uses. The principal instruments for this purpose are banks of deposit. Where these do not exist, a prudent person must keep a sufficient sum unemployed in his own possession to meet every demand which he has even a slight reason for thinking himself liable to. When the practice, however, has grown up of keeping this reserve not in his own custody, but with a banker, many small sums, previously lying idle, become aggregated in the banker's hands; and the banker, being taught by experience what proportion of the amount is likely to be wanted in a given time, and knowing that, if one depositor happens to require more than the average, another will require less, is able to lend the remainder, that is, the far greater part, to producers and dealers: thereby adding the amount, not indeed to the capital in existence, but to that in employment, and making a corresponding addition to the aggregate production of the community.
239
Director of the Mint, Report, 1883, p. 49, and Linderman, ibid., p. 173.
240
See “Atlantic Monthly,” “The Silver Danger,” May, 1884.