Publisher's Synopsis
From the Introduction.
EVERY man in the community has now the same liberty to make and issue money, that he has to buy, sell, walk, run, lift, or do a dozen other things, - no law hindering him. The only restriction is, that his money shall not be made in imitation of that made by any other man.
Two to three hundred millions of dollars, in money, are made each day, doing the work of money for the day, and are destroyed at night.
Money is coin, or any non-interest bearing title to property, that can be immediately realized on, with the option of coin.
In what is herein presented, the endeavor is to make plain what MONEY, TRADE, and BANKING really are, spending no time on theories, and claiming to do nothing more than to present existing .acts with reasonable clearness and free from all technicalities. There is no other department of knowledge in which theories are of so little value, -- where experience should so exclusively be teacher and master. In finance, as in nearly all other things, the truth lies on the surface. If it has been missed it is because we have ploughed too deep for it. We have missed it because it was so near and so simple; we rejected it when we saw it. Furthermore, there is nothing in these questions that a plain man may not fully understand. In order to fairly cover the ground and make the statements reasonably complete, it will be necessary to state formally, many familiar things.
