the fur-bearing animals are nearly killed off and the fur trade declines.  When tobacco was the great staple of export from Virginia, everybody was willing to take it, and its market price was known by all.  It served well then as the chief money, but, as it ceased to be the almost exclusive product of the province, it lost the knowableness and marketability it had before.  In agricultural and pastoral communities where every one had a share in the pasture, cattle were a fairly convenient form of money, but in the city trade of to-day their use as money is impossible.  Thus, in a sense, different commodities compete, each trying to prove its fitness to be a medium of trade; but only one, or two, or three at the most, can at one time hold such a place.

While industrial changes and conditions affect the choice of money, in turn money reacts upon the other industrial conditions.  If a new and more convenient material is found or the value of the money metal changes to a degree that affects the generalness of its use, industry is greatly affected.  The discovery of mines in America brought into Europe in the sixteenth century a great supply of the precious metals, and this change in the use of money reacted powerfully upon industry.  Money, being itself one of the most important of the industrial conditions, is affected by and in turn affects all others.

Sec. 4. #The precious metals as money#.  Certain of the metals early began to show their superior fitness to perform the monetary function.  The metals first used as money were copper, bronze (an alloy of copper with nickel), and iron.  These were truly precious metals in early times for they were found only in small quantities in a few localities.  They, therefore, were widely sought and highly valued as ornaments and for use as tools and weapons.  But as the great ancient nations emerged into history, these materials were already being displaced in large measure.  Their value fell greatly as a result of greater production due to somewhat regular mining.  As wealth grew, as trade increased, as the use of money developed, as commerce extended to more distant lands, the heavier, less precious metals failed to serve the growing monetary need, especially in the larger transactions.  Silver and gold, step by step, often making little progress in a century, became the staple and dominant forms of money in the world, while copper and nickel still continued to be used for the smaller monetary pieces.  Every community has witnessed some stages of this evolution.  In this contest silver had proved itself a few centuries ago to be on the whole the fittest medium of exchange for most purposes, though gold was at the same time in use in larger transactions and in international trade.