This conspiracy of the lawmakers, by which the soldier in the field was paid in depreciated greenbacks while the Wall Street usurer received gold, did not deprive the paper money of its splendid functions. While coin rose to a great premium, owing to the special use made of it in payment of customs and interest on the public debt, the legal-tender money carried on the great war and conducted the business of the most prolific and prosperous epoch in the history of the United States. As a matter of fact the greenbacks, discredited by legislation as they were, did not depreciate in comparison with commodities, but gold _appreciated_ owing to the special demand created for it by law. The people never lost confidence in the government paper money, even in the darkest hours of the panic of 1873, as shown by the language of President Grant. He said: “The experience of the present panic has proven that the currency of the country, based, as it is, upon the credit of the country, is the best that has ever been devised. Usually, in times of such trials, currency has become worthless or so much depreciated in value as to inflate the values of all necessaries of life as compared with currency. Every one holding it has been anxious to dispose of it on any terms. Now we witness the reverse. Holders of currency hoard it as they did gold in former experiences of like nature.”—_Message, December 1, 1873._ The Functions of Money. The functions or uses of money are three-fold: It is a measure of value. It is a medium of exchange. It is a means of storing wealth. As _a measure of value_ money determines in what proportion commodities and services shall be interchanged. The yardstick measures the quantity of fabrics; but some fabrics are more valuable than others. A bolt of silk, for instance, is more valuable than a bolt of muslin—a difference which the yardstick, alone, cannot indicate; it merely measures quantities, not values. Here the money measure becomes necessary. The abstract unit which we call a dollar measures the _values_ of both silk and muslin, and determines how many yards of muslin should be exchanged for a yard of silk.