[Footnote: 3 This confusion has had important practical consequences in the field of taxation. See Vol. I, pp. 265-267, and below, ch. 17.] [Footnote 4: These claims mutually delimit each other (whether they be called equitable claims, or liens, or property rights), and wealth is not multiplied by multiplying the claims, as is unfortunately sometimes assumed to be the case. See above, sec. 3.] [Footnote 5: See Vol. I, p. 51.] [Footnote 6: See Vol. I, p. 73.] [Footnote 7: This will appear in comparing the competitive method of distribution with other methods in ch. 31.] [Footnote 8: See Vol. I, p. 143, on medieval land tenures; p. 158, on customary rents; p. 190, on the effect of caste.] [Footnote 9: See Vol. I, p. 227.] PART II MONEY AND PRICES CHAPTER 3 NATURE, USE, AND COINAGE OF MONEY § 1. Origin of money. § 2. Qualities of the original money-goods. § 3. Industrial changes and the forms of money. § 4. The precious metals as money. § 5. Gold-using countries. § 6. Varying extent of the use of money. § 7. Money defined and reviewed. § 8. Metal money without or with coinage. § 9. Technical features of coinage. § 10. Seigniorage defined. § 1. #Origin of money#. Everywhere in the world where the beginnings of regular trade have appeared, some one of the articles of trade soon has come to be taken by many traders who did not expect to keep or use it themselves, but to pass it along in another trade.[1] This made it money, for money is whatever comes to be used as a general price-good. The character of a _general_ price good clearly distinguishes money from goods bought and sold by a particular class of merchants, such as grain, cattle, etc., to be sold again. It is only in so far as a particular good comes to be taken by persons not specially dealing in it, taken for the purpose of using it as a price-good to get something else which they desire, that a thing has the character of money. The thing called money thus is a durative good passing from hand to hand in a community, and completing its use in turn to each possessor of it only as he parts with it. The use of money is of such social importance, that it would be impossible for modern industrial society to exist without it. The discussion of money touches many interests, it raises many questions of a political and of an ethical nature. There are perhaps more popular errors on this than on any other one subject in economics, but the general principles of money are as fully understood and as firmly established as are any parts of economics.