peech, called a tool. A tool is a piece of material taken into the
hand to apply force to other things, to shape them or move them.
Figuratively, this is what money does. A man takes it not to get
enjoyment out of it directly, but to apply force, to move something,
and that which he moves is the other commodity. Money thus (as money)
is always an indirect agent. Adam Smith aptly likened money to the
roads and wagons that transport goods, thus gratifying desires by
putting goods into more convenient places. The fundamental use that
money serves is to apportion one's income conveniently as it accrues
and as it is spent. The use of money increases the value of goods by
increasing the ease with which trade takes place. Like any tool or
agent, money is valued for what it does or helps to do. It enhances
the value of the goods that it buys and sells by dividing them into
quantities convenient for use and by making them available at
the right times. In the light of the principles of diminishing
gratification and of time-preference it is clear that the amounts in
which, and the times at which, goods are available have an essential
bearing on their values. Money is the most successful device ever
discovered for distributing the supplies of a journey along its
course, and the goods of daily need over a period of time. The use of
money as a storehouse of value by hoarding it is merely a more extreme
case of keeping income until a time when it will have a greater value
to the owner than it has in the present.[1]

Sec. 4. #Relative importance of money.# Because money is the general
expression of purchasing power, and comes to symbolize all other
wealth, it often assumes undue and exaggerated importance in men's
eyes. Money is but one of many forms of wealth. It constitutes but a
small percentage of the total wealth of a country, and it is far from
being the most indispensable to human welfare. Yet its importance,
as a whole, in determining the form of industrial organization is
enormous. In a society without money, industrial processes would be
very different, and trade would be hampered in manifold ways.

A poor community has little money because it cannot afford more; it
gets along with less money than is convenient just as it gets along
with fewer agents of every other kind that it could use. Pioneers in a
poor community where the average wealth is low cannot afford to keep
a large number of wagons, plows, good roads, or schoolh