ne silver dollar, payable to the bearer on demand.

"G. Fount Tillman, Register of the Treasury.
"D.N. Morgan, Treasurer of the United States."

The bills that we use are really silver certificates, which give us the
right to go to the nearest Treasury and demand as many silver dollars as
we have notes for, whenever we are minded to do so.

The millions of dollars that are lying in the Sub-Treasury in New York
represent, therefore, millions of dollars in bills, or silver
certificates, that are in use and for which the Treasurer must be able
to give solid money at any time he is asked.

A country becomes bankrupt when it cannot redeem its paper money in
coin.

That is the condition of Spain and Cuba at this moment.

In Cuba General Weyler has ordered a large amount of paper money issued.
The banks have been obliged to obey him; but as every one knows that no
coin has been deposited in the Treasury to make the paper notes good,
people do not care to take them.

General Weyler says that Spain will make the notes good at the end of
the war; but as no one believes him, the paper money has steadily fallen
in value.

Falling in value, you must understand, means that the merchant will not
give a dollar's worth of goods in exchange for a dollar note.

In Cuba the merchants began by giving but ninety cents' worth of goods
for the dollar; but as the war has continued and the poverty of Spain
has become plainer, they have given less and less, until now they will
only give thirty cents' worth of goods in exchange for the paper dollar.

During the late war in the South, the Confederates issued paper money,
which they promised to redeem as soon as the war was over, but for which
they had no coin to deposit.

Toward the close of the war, when the Southern cause had become
hopeless, and the people feared the paper money might never be redeemed,
$150 Confederate money often had to be paid to get a pair of shoes
soled, and twenty-five to fifty paper dollars were demanded in exchange
for a loaf of bread.

Of course the United States did not redeem this money when the war was
over, the promise to redeem it having been made by the Confederate
States; and so the thousands of dollars of Confederate money did not
really have any value.

Those who had grumbled at paying such large sums to get their boots
soled got the best of the bargain, for they had something to show for
their money, while those who held the bills had really