Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Journal and Proceedings of the Hamilton Scientific Association, Vol. 16: For Session of 1899-1900
The lecturer then referred to a great many fallacies regarding the economic laws governing trade and commerce, owing to the pop ular errors regarding the functions of money. For example it was popularly supposed that the most profitable commerce was that which produced a large surplus of exports over imports. Mulhall points out how imports must necessarily exceed exports in value, because the former cover the costs of freight and insurance upon the latter, which until very 'recently amounted to about 6 per cent. The popular delusion is that when exports exceed imports the differ ence is brought back in money, as if there were some special ad vantage in that brand of labor product which consisted of metallic pieces of a given weight, shape and diameter. If money was a mere machine to facilitate barter, like weights and measures, the tape line or the yard stick, as undoubtedly it was, and nothing else (except perhaps to be stored away, like prec1ous stones as unproductive but undiminishing capital), how could it be a desirable thing to import in exchange for labor products exported? As a matter of fact, it never is.
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