Illustrated History of the United States Mint
9781465674425
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The need of a circulating medium of exchange has been acknowledged since the earliest ages of man. In the primeval days, bartering was the foundation of commercial intercourse between the various races; but this gave way in time, as exchanges increased. In the different ages many commodities have been made to serve as money,—tin was used in ancient Syracuse and Britain; iron, in Sparta; cattle, in Rome and Germany; platinum, in Russia; lead, in Burmah; nails, in Scotland; silk, in China; cubes of pressed tea, in Tartary; salt, in Abyssinia; slaves, amongst the Anglo Saxons; tobacco, in the earliest settlements of Virginia; codfish, in New Foundland; bullets and wampum, in Massachusetts; logwood, in Campeachy; sugar, in the West Indies; and soap, in Mexico. Money of leather and wood was in circulation in the early days of Rome; and the natives of Siam, Bengal, and some parts of Africa used the brilliantly-colored cowry shell to represent value, and some travelers allege that it is still in use in the remote portions of the last-named country. But the moneys of all civilized nations have been, for the greater part, made of gold, silver, copper, and bronze. Shekels of silver are mentioned in the Bible as having existed in the days of Abraham, but the metals are believed to have been in bars, from which proportionate weights were chipped to suit convenience. The necessity for some convenient medium having an intrinsic value of its own led to coinage, but the exact date of its introduction is a question history has not yet determined. It is supposed the Lydians stamped metal to be used as money twelve hundred years before Christ, but the oldest coins extant were made 800 B. C., though it is alleged that the Chinese circulated a square bronze coin as early as 1120 B. C. All of these coins were rude and shapeless, and generally engraved with representations of animals, deities, nymphs, and the like; but the Greeks issued coins, about 300 B. C., which were fine specimens of workmanship, and which are not even surpassed in boldness and beauty of design by the products of the coiners of these modern times. Even while these coins were in circulation spits and skewers were accepted by the Greeks in exchange for products, just as wooden and metal coins were circulated simultaneously in Rome, 700 B. C., and leather and metal coins in France, as late as 1360 A. D. The earliest coins bearing portraits are believed to have been issued about 480 B. C., and these were profiles. In the third century, coins stamped with Gothic front faces were issued, and after that date a profusion of coins were brought into the world, as every self-governing city issued money of its own. The earliest money of America was coined of brass, in 1612, and the earliest colonial coins were stamped in Massachusetts, forty years later. Ancient and extensive as the use of money has been in all its numerous forms and varied materials, it merely represented a property value which had been created by manual labor and preserved by the organic action of society. In a primitive state, herds of cattle and crops of grain were almost the only forms of wealth; the natural tendency and disposition of men to accumulate riches led them to fix a special value upon the metals, as a durable and always available kind of property. When their value in this way was generally recognized, the taxes and other revenues, created by kings and other potentates, was collected in part or wholly in that form of money. The government, to facilitate public business, stamped the various pieces of metal with their weight and quality, as they were received at the Treasury; and according to these stamps and marks, the same pieces were paid out of the Treasury, and circulated among the people at an authorized and fixed value.
