So long as our money is based on a metal that forms a part of the money of other countries, under a free coinage system, so long will the value of our money fluctuate under the influence of foreign monetary legislation, wars, panics, and a hundred forces beyond our control. Only by divorcing our money from that of other countries can we control it, and only by controlling it can it be made honest money. CHAPTER IX. A NEW MONETARY SYSTEM. In the development of commerce from simple barter between savages up to its present complicated form and enormous volume, an evolution is apparent, similar in character to that which has taken place in the organic world. In both the change has been from the simple and homogeneous to the complex and heterogeneous. In both it has been a differentiation of the functions of the several parts, accompanied by an increased sensitiveness of the whole. The primitive form of commerce, direct barter, may be compared to one of the lowest forms of animal life, in which all parts are alike mouth and stomach, and which if cut into pieces, will exist, severally, as a complete animal; while modern commerce, with its various parts, each with a separate function, and its highly sensitive organism, is more like a human being, in which each part is adapted to the work it has to perform and is dependent on all the others, so that the failure of any one to do its work cripples all the rest. Just as the cutting or maiming of a low form of animal life is of little damage to it, while a far less injury, relatively, would kill or seriously maim a man, so an injury to commerce, that in a primitive form would amount to little, in our modern highly developed system would cripple it greatly. Money is one of the most important parts of our industrial system,--the very life-blood, in fact,--and if, for any reason, it fails to perform its functions fully and completely, the consequences are far more disastrous than they would have been under the more primitive systems of the past. Along with the evolution of commerce in general has gone an evolution of money and the mechanism of exchange. As the volume of traffic grew larger, the use of the bulkier commodities as money was gradually abandoned for the more valuable metals. In time, even these became too bulky and inconvenient for use as a medium of exchange, and credit, in its various forms, now does the work of money, as to this function, to a far greater extent than money itself does, and even the money itself is mostly a paper money,--a sort of certified credit. As previously stated, about 95 per cent of the bank deposits are in forms of credit, and of the actual money deposits only about one-tenth is gold, the balance being paper money and silver; so that, on the strength of these estimates, only .6 per cent of the exchanges of commodities are effected through the direct use of gold.