2.  Transportability; that is, the money material must be easy to carry, it must have a large value in small bulk and weight.  To carry a bag of wheat on one’s back a few miles requires as great an effort ordinarily as does the raising of the wheat, and the cost of carriage for fifty miles even by wagon will often equal the whole value of the wheat.  Cattle, while not comparatively very valuable in proportion to weight, and not possessing the other qualities of money in the highest degree, have the advantage that they can be made to carry themselves long distances, and therefore they have been much used as money in simpler economic conditions.

3.  Cognizability; that is, the money-good must be easy to know, and to judge as to quality.  If expert knowledge or special apparatus are needed to test it in order to avoid counterfeits, few could be ready to take it and trading would be a costly process.

4.  Durability; that is, the money-good must be easy to keep without much loss in amount or in quality, perhaps for long periods, until it can be passed on in trade.  Few kinds of food answer very well to this last requirement, being organic and perishable.  But all four qualities above named were pretty well embodied in primitive times in rock salt, in rare flints and bits of copper suitable for tools and weapons, in furs in northern countries, and in many articles of personal adornment, such as beads, feathers, jewels, and metal ornaments.

5.  Divisibility; that is, the quality in the monetary material that permits it to be divided easily into smaller amounts and then to be united again into larger masses at little cost and without loss in amount or in quality.  This quality is present only when the material is quite homogeneous throughout the whole mass, a condition fulfilled more completely by the metals than by any other goods.  This quality makes it possible to put the governmental stamp upon the money material, and to produce pieces, some of which are exact duplicates and some exact multiples, of others.  In this manner pieces of money are provided suitable for transactions of different magnitudes, down to small fractional amounts.  A monetary system of this kind aids greatly the development of the sense and habit of exact estimation of price.

Sec. 3. #Industrial changes and the forms of money#.  The money use, as has just been shown, is a resultant of a number of different motives in men.  The changing material and industrial conditions of society change the kind of money that is used.  Things that have the highest claim to fitness for money with a people at one stage of development have a low claim at another.  The final choice of the money-good depends on the resultant of all the advantages.  Shells are used for ornament in poor communities but cease to be so used in a higher state of advancement, and thus their saleability ceases.  Furs cease to be generally marketable in northern climes, when