EDUCATION.—MONEY.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3970, 19 September 1881, Page 2

EDUCATION.—MONEY.

(To the Editor of the ErJBNlffG STiB.)

Sib,—Money has been laconically, but with great truth, called the "Devil's plaything," and the "root of all evil." The annals of this invention are so largely mixed with legend that it would be improper to dignify the narrative with the name of history. But there is little doubt that Erichthcum, the fourth King of Athens, and, according to Greek mythology the son of Vulcan, invented money with the object of promoting and facilitating commerce between - tb@4Grecian Islands. He foresaw, however, some of the evils attached to the invention, and advised his countrymen to increase their natural riches, well knowing that a numerous population, with,' abundant corn, wine, oil, flocks, and herds, were immeasurably more valuable than money, and that labour in the cultivation of land would render its production inexhaustible and afford a liberal sustenance to all its inhabitants. He perceived the utility of money for foreign commerce, but he knew also that even this would languish by the introduction of luxury and consequent vanity and idleness. He 1 feared justly that it was & fatal invention. He found that it would excite avarice, ambition, and the voluptuous, and attract a number of pernicious arts that would enervate nature, and corrupt good manners, engendering thereby a distaste for moderate labour, and that happy simplicity which really constitute, the true security and repose of life. Could he have foreseen the wicked, the unjust, the cruel, the inhuman purposes to which money has since been applied, how he would have detested it, and cursed himself for its invention. Had he foreknown that it would be used by men to purchased, sell, and enslave their brethern, and to raise such barriers between purchasers and consumers that whole nations could be deprived of their bread or fuel, he would have locked the fatal invention in his heart, and carried it with him unknown to the grave. The subject of money forms an adjunct to the knowledge of the land question, and together wish it fittingly precedes a study of the equitable exchange of labour. It is obvious that if new countries are to escape the evils that beset the old ones, a philosophical knowledge of the land question, and a practical acquaintance, with the laws of money, must be taught in our public schools. It will here be most convenient to consider money under the three divisions into which it seems almost naturally to separate itself. First, as to how it is now used; secondly, as to the manner in whish it could be better made use of; and, thirdly, as it should be usefully and legitimately employed, always, however, premising that what we want taught to our childran is the purity with which it'could be used,and the iniquity with which it has been and is being abused. Political economists tell us that money is a gold and silver medium of exchange, and that its standard value is fixed by Government; but this definition is incorrect, as proved by the violent, suddeu, and frequent oscillations in the price of commodities, and the inability to obtain due return for labor, as also, in the inflation and contraction of prices. Money in all civilised states of society must, in some form or other, form a conspicuous part in its order; but the commerce of a State has to be transacted through narrow channels, which, tinder our present law, are expanded and contracted at will, thereby placing the entire machinery of production at its mercy, forming rather an abuse of money, whose proper function should be to set labor free, to the end that every person in the State willing and able to produce wealth that would enrich the State and himself might do so. At the present time no man can work without money or the permission of a mat), or even with it, thus investing money with a dictatorial or pre-emptive right over labor; and, as a consequence, behold, the unholy, theinhuman, the fiendish, purching power of money. Two meu—both, •■ we are told, born free and made in the image of God;—the first sells his lifeyes, life itself; the second buys it; one Christian man buys, kidnaps, or pro* cures some hundreds of his fellow men, and; consigning them to the hellish horror of the middle passage, sells them to other Christian men. Competition sets up ' inanimate things as the rival of things which think, feel and suffer, and sup. plants by the work of a machine that can feel no hunger the work of a living being, who dies if employment fails. Witness herein the execrable purchasing power of money! Beboid the Shylocks of the - present day, bond and knife in hand, demanding their pound of flesh, for such is the iniquitous purchasing power, * and the unholy right of money.—l' am, ' &c '» . Bon Ami.