by Barkham Burroughs
Available in 217 free installments
Owner:
Turkey--Gold coins: Lira or medjidie, $4.40; half-lira, $2.20; quarter-lira, $1.10. The silver unit is the piastre, worth 4 cents of our currency, and silver coins of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 piastres are current.
The currency of Denmark is also in use in Norway and Sweden, these three countries forming the Scandinavian Union. Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Roumania, Servia, Spain and Switzerland are united in the Latin Union, and use the French coinage. The units in the different States are, it is true, called by different names; as in France, Belgium and Switzerland, franc and centime; in Italy, lira and centesimo; in Greece, drachm and lepta; in Roumania, lei and bani: in Servia, dinar and para; in Spain, peseta and centesimo; but in all cases the value is the same.
The similarity in the coinage of different countries is worth notice. A very slight change in the percentage of silver used would render the half-guilder of Austria, the krone of the Scandinavian Union, the franc of the Latin Union, the mark of Germany, the half-guilder of Holland, the quarter-ruble of Russia, the 200-reis piece of Portugal, the 5-piastre piece of Turkey, the half-milreis of Brazil and the half-rupee of India, all interchangeable with the English shilling, and all of them about the value of the quarter-dollar of North and South American coinage. With the exception of Brazil, the other South American States, as well as Mexico and the Central American countries, are all rapidly approximating a uniform coinage, which the needs of commerce will unquestionably soon harmonize with that of the United States. Curiously enough, the great force that is assimilating the alien branches of the human race is not Christianity but trade.
A HISTORY OF THE PANIC OF 1857.--The cause of the panic of 1857 was mainly the rage for land speculation which had run through the country like an epidemic. Paper cities abounded, unproductive railroads were opened, and to help forward these projects, irresponsible banks were started, or good banks found themselves drawn into an excessive issue of notes. Every one was anxious to invest in real estate and become rich by an advance in prices. Capital was attracted into this speculation by the prospect of large gains, and so great was the demand for money that there was a remarkable advance in the rates of interest. In the West, where the speculative fever was at its highest, the common rates of interest were from 2 to 5 per cent. a month. Everything was apparently in the most prosperous condition, real estate going up steadily, the demand for money constant, and its manufacture by the banks progressing successfully, when the failure of the "Ohio Life and Trust Company," came, August 24, 1857, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. This was followed by the portentous mutterings of a terrible coming storm. One by one small banks in Illinois, Ohio, and everywhere throughout the West and South went down. September 25-26 the banks of Philadelphia suspended payment, and thus wrecked hundreds of banks in Pennsylvania, Maryland and adjoining States. October 13-14, after a terrible run on them by thousands of depositors, the banks of New York suspended payment. October 14 all the banks of Massachusetts went down, followed by a general wreckage of credit throughout New England. The distress which followed these calamities was very great, tens of thousands of workmen being unemployed for months. The New York banks resumed payment again December 12, and were soon followed by the banks in other cities. The darkest period of the crisis now seemed past, although there was much heart rending suffering among the poor during the winter which followed. The commercial reports for the year 1857 showed 5,123 commercial failures, with liabilities amounting to $291,750,000.
THE HISTORY OF PLYMOUTH ROCK.--A flat rock near the vicinity of New Plymouth is said to have been the one on which the great, body of the Pilgrims landed from the Mayflower. The many members of the colony, who died in the winter of 1620-21, were buried near this rock. About 1738 it was proposed to build a wharf along the shore there. At this time there lived in New Plymouth an old man over 90 years of ago named Thomas Faunce, who had known some of the Mayflower's passengers when a lad, and by them had been shown the rock on which they had landed. On hearing that it was to be covered with a wharf the old man wept, and it has been said that his tears probably saved Plymouth Rock from oblivion. After the Revolution it
