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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: faces; and the coins of different denominations should be distinguishable by their size, colour, design, or other easily recognizable features. The metals used in the manufacture of coins should also be capable of receiving and holding an easily recognizable stamp. The fact that the medium of exchange is used as a means of saving and that it must pass from hand to hand year in and year out explains the need for durability. Any commodity which wears out readily would soon lose a portion of its value and become worthless for further service as a medium, to say nothing of the loss, expense, and inconvenience involved in its use. If it were perishable, it would be useless for purposes of hoarding and accumulation. Absolute certainty of value is also essential to a good medium. If one does not know the exact value of what he is to receive in payment, he will hesitate about selling, or he will raise the price of his commodities or services in a degree sufficient to recoup him for any possible loss from over-estimating its value. A medium of uncertain value, therefore, is sure to obstruct trade and to cause spasmodic and speculative fluctuations in prices. The five characteristic features of a good medium which we have just described enable us to explain the chief component elements of modern currencies. Generally speaking it is true that those elements have survived and become permanent parts of currency systems which have proven to be best adapted to the ends they serve. Arbitrary power directed by ignorance or self-interest has exerted an unfavorable influence here and there and from time to time, but in the long run the necessities and the convenience of the commercial world have triumphed in the survival of the fittest. 3. The composition of modern currencies.?The curren...

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