sly engaged
in the task. The English shilling is working northwards from the Cape
of Good Hope, has already come in touch with the German mark and the
Portuguese peseta which have been introduced on both the east and west
sides of the Continent, and will in due time meet the French franc and
Italian lira coming south from the shores of the Mediterranean. In Asia,
the Indian rupee, the Russian rouble, the Japanese yen, and the
American-Philippine coins are already competing for the patronage of the
Malay and the Chinaman. In South America neither American nor European
coins have any foot-hold, the Latin-American nations being well supplied
by systems of their own, all related more or less closely to the coinage
of Mexico or Portugal. Thus the plainly evolutionary task of pushing
civilization into the uneducated parts of the world through commerce is
as badly hampered by the different coins offered to the barbarian as are
the efforts of the evangelists to introduce Christianity by the
existence of the various denominations and creeds. The Church is
beginning to appreciate the wastage in its efforts, and is trying to
minimize it by combinations among the denominations having for their
object to standardize Christianity, so to speak, by reducing tenet and
dogma to the lowest possible terms. Commerce must do the same. The white
man's coins must be standardized and simplified.... The international
coin will come in a comparatively short time, just as will arrive the
international postage stamp, which, by the way, is very badly needed.
For the upper classes of all countries, the people who travel, and have
to stand the nuisance and loss of changing their money at every
frontier, the bankers and international merchants who have to cumber
their accounts with the fluctuating item of exchange between commercial
centres will insist upon it. All the European nations, with the
exception of Russia and Turkey, are ready for the change, and when these
reach the stage of real constitutionalism in their progress upward,
they will be compelled to follow, being already deeply in debt to the
French, English, and Germans. Japan may be counted upon to acquiesce
instantly in any unit agreed upon by the rest of the civilized world."

This writer points out that the opening out of the uncivilized parts of
the world to commerce will alone serve to make an international coinage
absolutely indispensable.

Without, however, introducing a really new