Part 46

The skins of animals were long used by savage tribes as money. The skins were valuable in trading and a man’s fortune was reckoned by the number of skins he owned. As soon as the animals became domesticated, however, the whole animal replaced the skin as the unit of value. This change undoubtedly came because a whole animal is more valuable than only its skin. The first skins obtainable however were worn by wild animals--the kind that the people could not deliver to someone else alive and whole. But when the animals became domesticated, which meant that man tamed them and kept them where he could control them at will, the skin and the wild animal ceased to be a unit of value because it was an uncertain kind of money. Among domestic animals, oxen and sheep were the earliest forms of money--an ox was considered worth ten sheep. This idea of using cattle as money was used by many tribes in many lands. We find traces of it in the laws of Iceland. The Latin word pecunia (pecus) shows that the earliest Roman money was composed of cattle. The English word fee indicates this also. The Irish law records show the same evidence of the use of cattle as money and within recent years the cattle still form the basis of the currency of the Zulus and Kaffirs.

When slavery became prominent many lands adopted the slaves as the unit of value. A man’s wealth was reckoned by the number of slaves he owned.

Then, when the practice of agriculture became more common, people used the products of the soil as money--maize, olive oil, cocoanuts, tea and corn--the latter is said to pass current as actual money in certain parts of Norway now. They used these products of the soil for money even in our own country. Our ancestors in Maryland and Virginia before the Revolutionary War, and even after, used tobacco as money. They passed laws making tobacco money and paid the salaries of the government officials and collected all taxes in tobacco.

Other early forms of money were ornaments and these serve the purpose of money among all uncivilized tribes. In India they used cowrie shells--a small yellowish-white shell with a fine gloss. The Fiji Islanders used whales’ teeth; some of the South Sea Island tribes used red feathers; other nations used mineral products as money--such as salt in Abyssinia and Mexico.

Up to this point we have talked about the things used as money from the standpoint of primitive forms of money. Today the metals have practically driven all these other crude forms of money out.

Metallic Forms of Money.

~WHY WE USE METALS FOR COINING~

The use of metals as money goes far back in the history of civilization but it has never been possible to trace the historical order of the adoption of the various metals for the purposes. Iron according to the statement of Aristotle was at one time extensively used as money. Copper, in conjunction with iron, was used in early times as money in China; and until comparatively a short time ago was used for the coins of smaller value in Japan. Iron spikes were used in Central Africa and nails in Scotland; lead money is now used in Burmah. Copper has long been used as money. The early coins of England were made of tin. Finally, however, came silver and silver was the principal form of money up to a few years ago. It was the basis of Greek coins introduced at Rome in 269 B. C. Most of the money of Medieval times was composed of silver.

The earliest traces of gold used as money is seen in pictures of ancient Egyptians “weighing in scales heaps of gold and silver rings.”

Why Do We Use Gold and Silver as Money Principally?

There are a good many reasons why gold and silver have become almost universal materials for use as money. Perhaps this will be better understood if these reasons are set down in order.

1st. It is necessary that the material out of which money is made should be valuable, but nothing was ever used as money that had not first become desirable and, therefore, valuable as money. This is only one of the incidental reasons for taking gold and silver for coining money.

2nd. To serve its purpose best, money should be easy to carry around--in other words, its value should be high in proportion to its weight.

The absence of this quality made the early forms of money such as skins, corn, tobacco, etc., undesirable. It was difficult to carry very much money about. Imagine the skin of a sheep worth a dollar, say, and having to carry ten of them down to pay the grocer. To a certain extent this difficulty occurred with iron and copper money and in times when they used live cattle it was a pretty expensive job to pay your debts because, while the cattle could move, it was still expensive to drive them from place to place. A man who accepted a thousand cattle in payment had to go to some expense in getting them home. Then it was expensive to have money when live cattle were used because the cattle, of course, had to be fed and from that point of view the poor man who had no money was better off than the rich man who had money. When cattle were used as money it cost a lot to keep it. Our kind of money doesn’t eat anything; in fact, if you put it in a savings bank, it will earn interest money for you. But when cattle were used as money it cost a great deal to keep them and so it was worse than not earning any interest.

3rd. Another quality that money should possess is divisibility without damage and also the quality of being united again. This quality is possessed by the metals in every sense because they can be fused, while skins and precious stones suffer in value greatly when they are divided.

4th. The material out of which money is made should be the same throughout in quality and weight so that one unit of money should be worth as much as any other unit. This could never be true of skins or cattle as the difference in the size of skins is very great sometimes, and a small skin from the same animal could not be worth as much as a large one, or a skin of an animal of inferior quality so valuable as a very fine one.

5th. Another quality which money should possess is durability. This requirement made it necessary to use something else besides animals or vegetable substances. Animals die and vegetables will not keep and so lose their value. Even iron is apt to rust and through that process lose more or less of its value.

6th. The materials out of which money is made should be easy to distinguish and their value easy to determine. For this reason such things as precious stones are not good to use as money because it takes an expert to determine their value and even they are not always certain to be correct.

7th. Then a very important quality that the material out of which money is made is that its value should be steady. The value of cattle varies very greatly and, in fact, most of the materials out of which the first currencies were made were subject to quick change in value in a short time. The value of gold and silver does not change excepting at long intervals. Gold and silver are both durable and easily recognizable. They can be melted, divided and united. The same is true of other metallic substances, but iron as stated is subject to rust and its value is low; lead is too soft. Tin will break, and both of them and copper also are of low value. Gold and silver change only slowly in value when the change at all; they do not lose any of their value by age, rust or other cause; they are hard metals and do not, therefore, wear. Their value in proportion to the bulk of the pieces used for money is so large that the money made from them can be carried without discomfort and it is almost impossible to imitate them.

Who Made the First Cent?

Vermont was the first state to issue copper cents. In June, 1785, she granted the authority to Ruben Harmon, Jr., to make money for the state for two years. In October of the same year, Connecticut granted the right to coin 10,000 pounds in copper cents, known as the Connecticut cent of 1785. Massachusetts, in 1786, established a mint and coined $60,000 in cents and half cents. In the same year, New Jersey granted the right to coin $10,000 at 15 coppers to the shilling. In 1781 the Continental Congress directed Robert Morris to investigate the matter of governmental coinage. He proposed a standard based on the Spanish dollar, consisting of 100 units, each unit to be called a cent. His plan was rejected. In 1784, Jefferson proposed to Congress, that the smallest coin should be of copper, and that 200 of them should pass for one dollar. The plan was adopted, but in 1786, 100 was substituted. In 1792 the coinage of copper cents, containing 264 grains, and half cents in proportion, was authorized; their weight was subsequently reduced. In 1853 the nickel cent was substituted and the half cent discontinued, and in 1864 the bronze cent was introduced, weighing 48 grains and consisting of 95 per cent. of copper, and the remainder of tin and zinc.

How Did the Name Uncle Sam Originate?

The name Uncle Sam is a jocular name long in use for the Government of the United States.

Shortly after the war of 1812 was declared, Elbert Anderson of New York State, who was a contractor for the army, went to Troy, New York, to purchase a quantity of provisions. At that place the provisions were inspected, the official inspectors being two brothers named Wilson--Ebenezer and Samuel. The latter was very popular among the men and was known as “Uncle Sam Wilson” and everybody called him that. The boxes in which the provisions were packed were stamped with four letters, E. A. for Elbert Anderson, and U. S. for United States. One of the men engaged in making the inspection asked another of the workmen who happened to be a jocular fellow, what the letters E. A. U. S. on the boxes stood for. He said in reply that he did not know but thought they probably meant Elbert Anderson and Uncle Sam Wilson, and that they had left off the W which would stand for Wilson. The suggestion caught on quickly and as such things often do, the joke spread rapidly so that everybody soon thought of the name “Uncle Sam” whenever they saw the letters U. S. on anything or in any place.

The suit of striped trousers and long tailed coat and beaver hat in which Uncle Sam is now always represented in pictures, was the inspiration of the famous cartoonist.

The Story in a Loaf of Bread

Why is Bread so Important?

The history of bread as a food reads like a romance. It has played an important part in the destinies of mankind and its struggles through the ages to perfection. The progress of nations through their different periods of development can be traced by the quality and quantity of bread they have used.

No other food has taken such an important part in the civilization of man.

To a large extent it has been the means of changing his habits from those of a savage to those of a civilized being. It has supplied the peaceful pursuits of agriculture and turned him from war and the chase.

It is an interesting fact that the civilized and the semi-civilized people of the earth can be divided into two classes, based upon their principal cereal foods: the rice eaters and the bread eaters.

Every one admits that rice eaters are less progressive, while bread eaters have always been the leaders of civilization.

It is an interesting fact that just as Japan is changing from a rice-eating nation to a bread-eating nation she is asserting her power.

Any one who stops to consider the history of nations will see that this matter of what we eat is the one question of vital importance.

Bread is one of the earliest, the most generally used and one of the most important foods used by man. Without bread the world would not exist without great hardship. On bread alone a nation of people can exist, and to sit down to a meal without it causes us to feel at once that something is missing.

What Was the Origin and Meaning of Bread?

Bread is baked from many substances, although when we think of bread, we usually think of wheat bread. It is sometimes made from roots, fruits and the bark of trees, but generally only from grains such as wheat, rye, corn, etc. The word bread comes from an old word _bray_, meaning to pound. This came from the method used in preparing the food. Food which was pounded was said to be brayed and later this spelling was changed to bread. Properly speaking, however, these brayed or ground materials are not really bread in our sense of using the term until they are moistened with water, when it becomes dough. The word _dough_ is an old one meaning to “moisten.” This dough was in olden times immediately baked in hot ashes and a hard indigestible lump of bread was the result. Accidentally it was discovered that if the dough was left for a time before baking, allowing it to ferment, it would when mixed with more dough, swell up and become porous. Thus we got our word loaf from an old word _lifian_, which meant to raise up or to lift up.

When Was Wheat First Used in Making Bread?

It is not clearly known when or by whom wheat was discovered, but it seems to have been known from the earliest times. It is mentioned in the Bible, can be traced to ancient Egypt and there are records showing that the Chinese cultivated wheat as early as 2700 B.C. To-day it supplies the principal article for making bread to all the civilized nations of the world.

The origin of the wheat plant is said to have been a kind of grass which is given a Latin name _Ægilops ovata_ by the botanists.

Will Wheat Grow Wild?

This is a question that has puzzled the world’s scientists for more than two thousand years. From time to time it has been reported by investigators in various parts of the world that here and there wheat has been found growing wild and doing well, but every time a further investigation is made, it develops that the wheat has been cultivated by some one. There is as yet no evidence for believing that wheat will grow in a wild state.

What is the Difference between Graham Flour and Whole Wheat?

Graham flour from which Graham bread is baked is made from unbolted flour. The process of bolting flour, which is described in one of the following pages, consists briefly in taking out of it all but the inside of the grain of wheat. When this has been done, we have pure white flour.

In making Graham flour every part of the grain of wheat is left in the flour, and ground up finely. Many people think that Graham flour is made from a special grain called Graham, but this is not true. It is said that Graham bread is not so good for you because it contains the outside covering of the wheat grain or bran which is composed of almost pure silica, the same substance of which glass is made, and cannot therefore be good for us.

Whole wheat flour is made from the whole grain of wheat from which the outside covering or bran has been separated. It contains everything but the bran and is therefore the most nutritious flour made.

The grain of wheat has several coverings of bran coats, the outer one of which is the one composed of silica, and which is not valuable as food. Underneath this husk--are found the inner bran coats, which contain the gluten. Gluten is a dark substance containing the flesh-forming or nitrogenous elements, which are valuable in muscle building. The inside or heart of the grain of wheat consists of cells filled with starch, a fine white mealy powder which has little value as food, but is a great heat producer. Sometimes in making whole wheat flour, the heart of the grain is also removed, making a pure gluten flour. The name whole wheat for flour is not accurate, therefore, for Graham flour is made of the whole wheat grain, while “whole wheat” flour is made of only certain parts of the grain of wheat.

How is Flour Made?

In great factories the raw material is frequently taken in at one end and comes out of the opposite end as a finished locomotive, a Pullman palace car, or a pair of shoes. There is no such progression in making flour. The wheat comes in at one place as a plain Spring or Winter wheat and at another goes out as flour, but in the process parts of it may go from top to bottom of the big mill 30 times. Instead of a factory where everything moves along from hand to hand or machine to machine, the flour mill is like a human body--a huge framework like the bones, with thousands of carrying devices, “elevators,” “spouts” and “conveyors,” like the veins and arteries of the blood-carrying system. Stop up a vein of wheat, the mill becomes clogged, and finally must shut down if it cannot be mechanically relieved. It is an intricate and intensely interesting process, the result of year-to-year experience.

Scouring that Suggests a Dutch Kitchen.

From the storage bins the wheat is drawn off through conveyors to the first of several cleaning processes, the “separators,” where the coarse grain which naturally comes with the wheat, such as corn and oats, and imperfect kernels of wheat, is taken out. After this general cleaning the grain goes to the “scouring machine,” which is an interesting device--a rapidly revolving cylinder with what are called “beaters” attached. The grain is thrown against perforated iron screens. Any clinging dirt is loosened, and a strong current of air passing through the cylinder is constantly “calling for dust,” as the miller aptly expresses it, and carries the impurities away as dust and dirt. Indeed, the cleaning process seems to be a constant one from the time the wheat enters the mill until the flour is made. Having been cleansed, the wheat is now ready for the rolls except for a “tempering” process, which is to prepare the grain, so that the outside of the wheat may be taken off without injury to the inside or kernel.

Then as the grain passes to the rolls there begins a gradual reduction of wheat to flour which is most intricate.

The first sets of rolls are corrugated and so adjusted as to “break” each grain of wheat into 12 to 15 parts. The “breaking” process goes on through five different sets of rolls.

The Big Bolters with Silken Sieves.

Closely allied with the rolling process is the bolting process, which, working hand in hand with it has made modern flour making so perfect. The bolting process consists of a series of sieves--a sifting of the broken grain so that it is finally, after repeated breaking and sifting, a flour. The bolter machine contains a number of sieves covered with silk bolting cloth with varying mesh or number of threads to the square inch. This bolting machine, moving rapidly, makes from 8 to 10 different separations of the material. From rolls to bolters, from bolters to purifiers, from purifiers to rolls, over and over, the process continues, until five different grades of “middlings” have been selected by the mechanical hands of the millers. The purifier is still another step to the process. It is a machine having eight sieves of different mesh. The “middlings” flow down over the different sieves in a thin sheet, a current of air meantime drawing all impurities out. With this purifying process completed, the material is ready for the smooth rolls.

The Mill Tries to Catch Up with the Bins.

When the flour is made it is conveyed to large round bins--five sheets of hard wood pressed together. These bins are being filled all the time and being emptied all the time, the mill being about seven hours behind the capacity of the bins, so that from start to finish the modern flour mill is a tremendously busy place.

Underneath the bins and connecting with them are the flour packers--automatic devices which pack a 3¹⁄₂-pound paper sack as accurately as a 196-pound barrel. The filled packages are sent down “chutes” to the shipping floor. There they go to wagons or through other chutes to boats.

The Story in a Lead Pencil[5]

[5] Courtesy of The Scientific American.

Why Do They Call Them Lead-pencils?

~WHERE LEAD PENCILS COME FROM~

The lead-pencil so generally used today is not, as its name would imply, made from lead, but from graphite. It derives its name from the fact that prior to the time when pencils were made from graphite, metallic lead was employed for the purpose. Graphite was first used in pencils after the discovery in 1565 of the famous Cumberland mine in England. This graphite was of remarkable purity and could be used without further treatment by cutting it into thin slabs and encasing them in wood.

Who Made the First Lead-pencils in America?

For two centuries England enjoyed practically a monopoly of the lead-pencil industry. In the eighteenth century, however, the lead-pencil industry had found its way into Germany. In 1761, Caspar Faber, in the village of Stein, near the ancient city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, started in a modest way the manufacture of lead-pencils, and Nuremberg became and remained the center of the lead-pencil industry for more than a century. For five generations Faber’s descendants made lead-pencils. Up to the present day they have continued to devote their interest and energy to the development and perfection of pencil making. Eberhard Faber, a great-grandson of Caspar Faber, immigrated to this country, and, in 1849, established himself in New York City. In 1861, when the war tariff first went into effect, he erected his own pencil factory in New York City, and thus became the pioneer of the lead-pencil industry in this country. Since then four other firms have established pencil factories here. Wages, as compared to those paid in Germany, were very high, and Eberhard Faber realized the necessity of creating labor-saving machinery to overcome this handicap. Many automatic machines were invented which greatly simplified the methods of pencil making and improved the product. To-day American manufacturers supply nine-tenths of the home demand and have largely entered into the competition of the world’s markets.

What Are Lead-pencils Made of?

The principal raw materials that enter into the making of a lead-pencil are graphite, clay, cedar and rubber. Although graphite occurs in comparatively abundant quantities in many localities, it is rarely of sufficient purity to be available for pencil making. Oxides of iron, silicates and other impurities are found in the ore, all of which must be carefully separated to insure a smooth, serviceable material. The graphites found in Eastern Siberia, Mexico, Bohemia and Ceylon are principally used by manufacturers.

Pictures by courtesy Joseph Dixon Crucible Co.