The Misbehaviour of Money
The Story of Money. By Norman Angell. (Cassell. 21s.)
Mn. NORMAN ANGELL could have rendered the community no greater service than he has done by the writing of this book. He is a prince of expositors, with a cast of mind clear, precise, and detailed ; impatient of mystery and inconclusion, a type of mind rare in England, a type reminiscent at its best of the great " encyclopaedists " of the.,French eighteenth century. Indeed, as the body of Mr. Angell's contributions to the elucidation of the great questions of our day grows more com- prehensive we see him as a twentieth-century " encyclopae- dist," preparing us and informing us of the great changes which must undoubtedly face our communities in the coming years in the same way that Diderot, Condorcet, Montesquieu and the others prepared the world for the great and rapid move- ments of the last century.
Mr. Angell has shown admirable judgment in choosing for one of his most sustained efforts at explanatory exposition the question of Money. Money, this strangest, most pervading, most essential tool of civilized humanity, has always fascinated restless and inquiring minds (sometimes to our ruin and confusion). It could not be otherwise, when we remember that this entity, which is the life-blood in the arteries of our modern communities, has been evolved, as it were, by the subcon- sciousness of man. No one at any time in history deliberately set out to evolve money. No master mind envisaged the extraordinary and multifarious uses to which such a device could be put. And yet, somehow or other, by slow, age-long, automatic processes, money did come into existence. The communities based on barter, of which Mr. Angell gives us a most interesting account, slowly changed into the moneyed civilizations of to-day, and it is only now, after centuries during which man has used this master device, this key to complex community living, that he is becoming self-conscious and is rationally investigating what this thing is which he has evolved without knowing it. And, as Mr. Angell points out, it is high tithe that he did so, for, although money is the indis- pensable tool of civilization, it is by no means a perfect tool. do the- contraiy, its misbehaviour; its unaccountable lapses and perversions have several times brought modern civilization to the verge of breakdown and may yet ruin it.
In his first chapter, Mr. Angell gives us an impressive series of quotations from such authorities, past and present, as Sir Josiah Stamp, H. G. Wells, Macaulay, McKenna, Alfred Marshall, Carl Snyder, Governor Benjamin Strong, and Mr. Henry Ford, as to the critical nature of the money question. It is becoming increasingly obvious that either we shall master money, understand its true nature, and find a way of con- trolling it, Or it will master and ruin us. When we speak of mastering money, we mean one thing—to stabilize its value. Money, Mr. Angell dins into his reader, is merely a measuring- stick. It is the common denominator by which we measure the exchange value of corn against boots, of boots against steam-engines, of steam-engines against Italian pictures, of Italian pictures against journeys in railway trains, of journeys in railway trains against surgical operations. But the first necessity of a measuring-stick is that it should always remain the same length, and this money most emphatically has never done, and does not now do.
The central chapters of the book tell us the story of the evolution of the device of money by the human race. It is a triumph of historical method, forming an indispensable back- ground for the study of the subject. Half the delusions and wild hopes of the money cranks should be dispelled for ever by this history. Chapter VII is called " Money Illusions Throughout the Ages " and forms a brilliant exposition of the confusion of money and wealth and provides a most satisfac- tory demolition of Mercantilist heresies.
Running through the book there is a sustained plea for the education of the coming generation in economics generally, and, above all, in this, the key question of modern economic science. As Mr. Angell writes :— , -
" The child must learn the rules which govern a speech that died thousand or two thowiand years ago, and even that ' the subjunctive mood is used in a subordinate proposition when both contingency and• futurity are expressed, or when the contrary fact is implied. . . . but of the- money-in his_poeket, which will concern him- him every bour of his life, which has given rise to an elabcirate mechanism of finance and credit that has become the very core of
his complicated and vulnerable civilization, compelling for its control the creation of intricate laws and direction of policies for which he, the citizen and voter, is ultimately responsible—about this thing, as distinct from Latin verbs and the cut cherry tree, the dates and battles, he learns as a rule nothing whatsoever."
The explanation is, of course, simple—that nine-tenths of the child's teachers have been taught about the use of the sub- junctive mood in a subordinate proposition, and are capable of transmitting this remarkable piece of knowledge to the child, but of economic science, let alone of monetary theory, the teacher is usually as innocent as the child. But from now on our teachers and our dons will have less excuse for such ignorance. The careful reading of Mr. Angell's book, even without turning to the excellent selective bibliography at the end, will give any reasonably intelligent person a working knowledge of this branch of economics.
For two important chapters Mr. Angell has turned to the assistance of experts. Mr. Louis Rasminsky of Toronto, contributes an excellent history of the varied and fruitful experience of America, and Mr. H. V. Hodson, a rising young economist, contributes a last chapter which consists of a compendious and invaluable summary of what all the experts say on the practical point of what we ought to do in order to make money behave properly.
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