The American Colonial economy depended largely on foreign
coins, barter, and commodity money. In 1690, the Massachusetts Bay Colony
issued the first Colonial currency denominated in British shillings, pounds, and
pence. Other colonies soon began to issue their own paper currency. In 1764,
the British declared Colonial currency illegal. An incessant warfare was waged
against American money. Its coinage defied the Royal prerogative; it was the money of treason.
The
History of Money by Jack Weatherford, 1997
The mint building,
which was started well before the Capitol or White House, became the first
public building constructed by the new government of the United States.
Gold
and The Gold Standard by Edwin Walter Kemmerer, Princeton, 1944
About the beginning
of the fourth century B.C., Dionysius, Tyrant of Syracuse, who had borrowed
heavily from his citizens and was being hard pressed for repayment, directed
that all the coins in the city should be brought to him, under penalty of death. He then restamped the coins and gave to
each drachma the value of two drachmas. By this debasement he was enabled to
pay off the original loan and, at the same time, repay the money that he had
ordered brought to the mint.
Fiat
Money Inflation in France by A.D. White, 1914
A.D White LL.D. [Yale, St. Andrews and John Hopkins], Ph.D.
[Jena], D.C.L. [Oxford], Late President and Professor of History at Cornell
University
The Convention
decreed that any person selling gold or silver coin, or making any difference
in any transaction between paper and specie, should be imprisoned in irons for six years. Later in September 1793, the
penalty for such offences was made
death, with confiscation of the criminal’s property. To reach the climax of
ferocity, the Convention decreed in May 1794, that the death penalty should be inflicted on any person convicted of
“having asked, before a bargain was concluded, in what money payment was to be
made.”
From the early
reluctant and careful issues of paper we saw, as an immediate result,
improvement and activity in business. Then arose the clamor for more paper money. At first, new issues were made with
great difficulty; but, the dyke once broken, the current of irredeemable
currency poured through was soon swollen beyond control. It was urged on by
speculators for a rise in values by demagogues who persuaded the mob that a
notion, by its simple fiat, could stamp real value to any amount upon valueless
objects. As a natural consequence a great debtor
class grew rapidly, and this class gave its influence to depreciate more
and more the currency in which its debts were to be paid.
As these knots of
plotting schemers at the city centers were becoming bloated with sudden wealth,
the producing classes of the country grew lean. In the schemes and speculations
put forth by stockjobbers and stimulated by the printing of more currency,
multitudes of small fortunes were absorbed and lost while a few swollen
fortunes were rapidly aggregated in the larger cities. Nor was this reckless
and corrupt spirit confined to business men; it began to break out in official
circles, and public men who, a few years before, had been thought above all
possibility of taint, became luxurious, reckless, cynical and finally corrupt.
The artful plundering of the people at large was bad enough, but worse still
was this growing corruption in official and legislative circles, enough to
cause widespread distrust, cynicism and want in faith in any patriotism or any
virtue.
History
of Monetary Systems by Alexander Del Mar, 1895
The Emperors of Rome
controlled the emissions of European money for thirteen centuries, and the
kings and dukes for nearly four centuries afterwards; whilst the usurers have
held it, to the present time, for about two centuries. It is not too much to
say that during these two centuries greater monetary changes have been made and
more losses have been occasioned to the industrial classes of the European
world than were made by all the degradations and debasements of the Imperial
and regal periods put together. Monetary systems have been changed from gold to
silver, from silver to gold, and from both silver and gold to paper; ten
thousands of worthless banks have been erected, thousands of millions of
worthless notes have been issued, and the entire products of industry have been
seized and perverted to the enrichment of a class, who know only how to scheme,
to undermine and to appropriate the earnings of mankind.
