VALUE OF GOLD 
[3 
he wants the services of the bus or tram on the way 
home. 
Before the introduction of paper currencies and 
methods of setting one payment against another 
provided by such machinery as bills of exchange and 
banks, the magnitude of the want for these stocks 
of coin must have depended largely on the amounts 
of money which the holder had to spend in the year 
and on the length of the periods for which payments 
such as rent and wages were made. A rich landlord 
with a large rent roll would be likely to have a bigger 
amount of coin in his possession at any time than the 
landlord with a small rent-roll. The richer man 
would receive £500 each quarter day, and gradually 
use that sum up till the next quarter came round: 
the poorer would do the same with the £100 he 
received at the quarter, and so would always have 
only about one-fifth as much in hand as the other. 
The farmer who paid “25 a quarter would be likely 
to have much less coin in hand for some time before 
quarter day than a neighbour who paid £100. So, 
too, any manufacturer who had large sums to pay 
in wages at fortnightly intervals would have to hold 
for at least a considerable part of the fortnight more 
coin than his neighbour who had only a small wages 
bill to provide for. And supposing ‘a custom came 
in of paying rents only twice a year instead of four 
times, both the landlord and the farmer would have 
to keep more coin by them on the average: and if 
weekly wages became the custom in place of fort- 
nightly, both employers and workmen would have to 
keep less by “* = (he average, as their stocks 
would be rep! ~~ fequently. Further, if 
mor - ) that more must be 
pa. ~-wedl I iarm or the wages of 
an r3er stocks of coin would be