tless play some part
for a very long period in the new economic order.

Money will owe its position of importance, under a producers' society,
to the need for a medium of exchange, and until men discover a means
more effective than money for the facilitating of exchange, money will
continue to play an economic role.

The inhabitant of a modern industrial community buys many things each
day. For the newspaper he spends a penny or two; for the street-car
ride, five or ten cents; for fruit, groceries, and other food products,
a number of small sums. These transactions, in a country of fifty
millions of people, aggregate tens of millions for each day.

There are three possible ways in which such transactions may be carried
on: (1) each party may give the other some commodity or service--a bunch
of carrots for a street-car ride, a sack of flour for a hat, (2) Money
may be employed. (3) A system of book-keeping may be devised, and each
purchaser may use a credit card, or some similar device. Barter is
impossible. Money is the usual means of facilitating exchange.
Bookkeeping, on a scale requisite for all petty transactions would be an
immensely intricate mechanism.

The chances are that at the outset, a producers' society will be
compelled to follow the practices of present-day economic life, and to
distinguish between the two chief uses of money: money as a means of
making change and money as a basis for credit.

This distinction has been pretty well established in all parts of the
world. The business man buys his morning paper and his lunch with the
change that he carries in his pocket. He buys his automobile or his
factory building with a check (credit). Money as a means of making
change will continue under a producers' society until some more
satisfactory means of handling minor transactions is discovered. Money
as a basis for credit will be superseded by a system of social
book-keeping.

The money used at the present time is based on an amount of some
commodity, such as gold. A producers' society will undoubtedly
substitute for this commodity base some unit of productive effort--an
hour's labor or a day's labor in a given industry. Such an idealized
labor production period could be used as a basis for all value
computations.

There are a number of requirements for such a value measure:--(1) It
must be reasonably stable; (2) it must be generally recognized and
accepted; (3) it must be the medium in which all valu