Of course I use the word “currency” here in the most restricted sense of the term, not including deposits, bills and checks, as some political economists justly do. Where banks and clearing-houses exist, and the use of bills and checks in the transaction of business is common, currency is mainly used for daily running expenses, for the payment of wages and salaries, and for the settlement of balances. Business transactions in which the whole amount of the value of a commodity passes from hand to hand in the shape of money are exceedingly rare.
Let us in this light compare England with the United States. In England, as well as in all European countries, the number of persons receiving salaries and wages is far greater in proportion than in the United States, and every one who is acquainted with those countries knows it. There are large armies there, large navies, which we have not. The number of private servants is much larger than here. The number of operatives and daily laborers is still greater. Now, although the population of the United Kingdom is only thirty-two million, while ours is forty million, yet the number of persons receiving salaries and wages is not only in proportion, but absolutely greater, much greater in England than here; and although wages rule higher here than they do there, yet I think I do not venture much when I say that the aggregate amount paid in wages and salaries in England is much larger than it is in the United States.
But there is another point of great importance. The number of exchanges and the values involved in them are, I might say, infinitely greater there than in the United States. When you compare the exports and imports of Great Britain with those of the United States, you will find that the former are about three times as great as the latter. But that does not cover the case. As everybody knows, England is, so to speak, the clearing-house of the
