A Dime for a Dollar

They look so sedately assured, those coins on the picture page of my old Webster’s International Dictionary, so aware of their place in a world of fixed values, sterling in fact as well as in character. Elegant, too—the Japanese fifty-sen’s radiant chrysanthemum; the Italian lira with its crowned and splendid eagle; the large five-peseta piece displaying the Spanish coat-of-arms; Marianne in her liberty cap sowing a field of wheat against a rising sun on the French two-franc coin. And there is the deeply incised Indian head on the American gold half-eagle. On my birthdays long ago my Aunt Amy used to give me such a half-eagle in a little velvet-lined box.

That was when the dollar was golden, and Saint-Gaudens’s double-eagle—perhaps the most beautiful coin ever minted—was worth just $20 instead of 25 times that amount. Even against the desiccated dollar, those other values, recalled so nostalgically on the pages of the old Webster, have faded away. The Japanese yen was then worth fifty cents; now it takes 118 of them to buy one of our copper-lined fifty-cent pieces. Lire, francs, pesetas were all worth a standard twenty cents. Those five-pesetas, how a few of them weighed down one’s pocket! And today a peseta is worth about a cent. As for the lira, on its way to emulating the post-World War I German mark, it is now worth one- 236th of its former silver self.

FR

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Francis Russell

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They look so sedately assured, those coins on the picture page of my old Webster’s International Dictionary, so aware of their place in a world of fixed values, sterling in fact as well as in character. Elegant, too—the Japanese fifty-sen’s radiant chrysanthemum; the Italian lira with its crowned and splendid eagle; the large five-peseta piece displaying the Spanish coat-of-arms; Marianne in her liberty cap sowing a field of wheat against a rising sun on the French two-franc coin. And there is the deeply incised Indian head on the American gold half-eagle. On my birthdays long ago my Aunt Amy used to give me such a half-eagle in a little velvet-lined box.

That was when the dollar was golden, and Saint-Gaudens’s double-eagle—perhaps the most beautiful coin ever minted—was worth just $20 instead of 25 times that amount. Even against the desiccated dollar, those other values, recalled so nostalgically on the pages of the old Webster, have faded away. The Japanese yen was then worth fifty cents; now it takes 118 of them to buy one of our copper-lined fifty-cent pieces. Lire, francs, pesetas were all worth a standard twenty cents. Those five-pesetas, how a few of them weighed down one’s pocket! And today a peseta is worth about a cent. As for the lira, on its way to emulating the post-World War I German mark, it is now worth one- 236th of its former silver self.