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06736_Field_TCUM T301.txt
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1996-04-10
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913b
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16 lines
The use of a commodity such as money naturally
increases its production. The nonspecialist economy of Virginia
in the seventeenth century made the elaborate European
currencies quite dispensable. Having little capital, and wishing
to put as little of this capital as possible into the shape of
money, the Virginians turned to commodity money in some
instances. When a commodity like tobacco was legislated into
legal tender, it had the effect of stimulating the production of
tobacco, just as the establishment of metallic currencies
advanced the mining of metals.
Money, as a social means of extending and amplifying work
and skill in an easily accessible and portable form, lost much of
its magical power with the coming of representative money, or
paper money. Just as speech lost its magic with writing, and
further with printing, when printed money supplanted gold the