Money and Man: A Survey of Monetary Experience

Money and Man: A Survey of Monetary Experience
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press | Date: 1977-6 | ISBN: 0806113383 | PDF | 307 pages | 13,5MB

FOREWORD TO THE FOURTH EDITION

IN 1934, Joseph A. Brandt, then editor of the University of Oklahoma Press, asked me to write a work that would explain in simple terms the devaluation of the dollar that had just
occurred and the events that made this devaluation necessary.
It was evident that an explanation of these happenings could not be reached through any of the monetary theories then current, all of them in eclipse with the collapse of the economic structure following the Great Crash of the stock market in 1929. A deeper examination was necessary, one that went to the nature of man's experience with money. A survey of this experience was indicated. What wisdom did the records offer?
The library shelves held an endless array of works devoted to the theories of money; only an insignificant number treated its history. Few went back beyond the times of Adam Smith for either theory or experience. Most textbooks, even today, treat the development of monetary experience as proceeding from barter to money to the institutions of credit. Yet, as the archeological evidence from Mesopotamia makes clear, institutions of credit were fully developed before those of money.
The work was published in 1935 as Money: The Human Conflict. In the interval the vast currents set in motion by the fiscal policies of the New Deal and the torrents raised by World War II created a new monetary landscape requiring its own geography.
These developments led to the republication of the work in 1961 and again, in a revised edition, in 1967, under the present title. This present edition incorporates further revisions by the author in order to take account of more recent happenings.
ELGIN GROSECLOSE
Washington, D.C.

Download