The Paper Moneys of Europe: Their Moral and Economic Significance

Hirst, Francis Wrigley, 1873-1953Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4
Word count
42K words
Chapters
5

Tags

English Originals Finance and Economics European EconomyEconomic EthicsMoney CirculationMonetary TheoryFinancial HistoryInflation WarningMoral HazardFinancial CommentaryPopular NarrativeWorld War I

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Paper Moneys of Europe: Their Moral and Economic Significance by HirstAuthor: Hirst, Francis Wrigley, 1873-1953,Language: English, Class: HG: Social sciences: Finance, Release Date: Jul 23, 2009

Editor's review

This book is a thematic discussion of European paper money by the British publicist Francis W. Hirst, examining the responsibility, credit, and consequences behind paper currency issuance from both moral and economic perspectives. Hirst long focused on fiscal and monetary issues, and his prose carries the argumentative style of early twentieth-century public debate, combining economic analysis of the monetary system with questions about the ethics of responsibility of issuers. Its value lies not in offering today's policy solutions but in presenting a slice of intellectual history in how the paper money question was understood: when money was detached from its metallic anchor, how did society assess its legitimacy? It is suitable as supplementary reading in monetary history, the history of economic thought, and fiscal ethics, and is best read alongside standard history textbooks to appreciate the context of the era. The original is in English and not long; read it slowly and take notes.

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Reading tips

  1. Read the introduction or conclusion first to grasp the argument, then return to the argumentation to reduce the burden of long English sentences.
  2. Keep a notebook and record, as you read, the evidence behind the author's judgments on the moral consequences of paper money.
  3. Read alongside chapters on the monetary system of the same period to build a coordinate system for the historical background.
  4. After each chapter, restate the core claims in two or three sentences to test understanding rather than pursue speed.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
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  5. 5

FAQ

Does this book discuss today's European paper money policy? No. The book was written in the early twentieth century and discusses the moral and economic significance of European paper money issuance at that time; it is a historical discussion. It should be read in its own era, not as an analysis of the current euro or national monetary policies.
Can I read it without a background in economics? Yes, but it takes some patience. The author uses the language of public debate of the time, and concepts are not defined as systematically as in modern textbooks. It is advisable to first understand basic background such as the gold standard and paper money issuance reserves; the main text will then read much more smoothly.
How difficult is the original English? It is early twentieth-century political prose, with rather long sentences and many abstract nouns, but a clear structure. Readers with university-level English reading ability who are willing to look up words can finish it; those seeking quick conclusions may read the beginning and end first.
Is it suitable as a course textbook? It is better suited as supplementary reading than as a main textbook. It is limited in length and not strongly systematic, but it offers an intellectual-history perspective and the experience of a primary text, making it suitable for discussion in courses on monetary history or the history of economic thought.

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About the author

Hirst, Francis Wrigley, 1873-1953 Author · British · 1873–1953

Francis Wrigley Hirst (1873–1953) was a British economist and journalist who served as editor of The Economist and wrote extensively on politics and economics. One of his works is held in this collection: The Paper Moneys of Europe: Their Moral and Economic Significance, which examines European paper currency from both a moral and an economic perspective. Public information on him is limited, and details of his life and a complete bibliography are difficult to set out here. On the available evidence, his writing addressed practical economic questions, combining a journalist's sense of issues with an economist's analytical perspective, and had some influence on economic debate in British public opinion in the first half of the twentieth century.