a person receiving a piece of commodity money may retain it for its use-value, as food, ornament, tool, or weapon, or may retain it for a time and then spend it as money.  This case of value is no more difficult than that of anything else having two or more uses.  For example, cattle are used for milk, for meat, and as beasts of burden.  Each of these uses is logically independent as a cause of value, yet all are mutually related, the value of cattle to a particular person being determined by the consideration of all the uses united into one scale of varying gratification.

Sec. 3. #Money as a valuable tool.# Money is often, by a figure of speech, called a tool.  A tool is a piece of material taken into the hand to apply force to other things, to shape them or move them.  Figuratively, this is what money does.  A man takes it not to get enjoyment out of it directly, but to apply force, to move something, and that which he moves is the other commodity.  Money thus (as money) is always an indirect agent.  Adam Smith aptly likened money to the roads and wagons that transport goods, thus gratifying desires by putting goods into more convenient places.  The fundamental use that money serves is to apportion one’s income conveniently as it accrues and as it is spent.  The use of money increases the value of goods by increasing the ease with which trade takes place.  Like any tool or agent, money is valued for what it does or helps to do.  It enhances the value of the goods that it buys and sells by dividing them into quantities convenient for use and by making them available at the right times.  In the light of the principles of diminishing gratification and of time-preference it is clear that the amounts in which, and the times at which, goods are available have an essential bearing on their values.  Money is the most successful device ever discovered for distributing the supplies of a journey along its course, and the goods of daily need over a period of time.  The use of money as a storehouse of value by hoarding it is merely a more extreme case of keeping income until a time when it will have a greater value to the owner than it has in the present.[1]

Sec. 4. #Relative importance of money.# Because money is the general expression of purchasing power, and comes to symbolize all other wealth, it often assumes undue and exaggerated importance in men’s eyes.  Money is but one of many forms of wealth.  It constitutes but a small percentage of the total wealth of a country, and it is far from being the most indispensable to human welfare.  Yet its importance, as a whole, in determining the form of industrial organization is enormous.  In a society without money, industrial processes would be very different, and trade would be hampered in manifold ways.