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Traffic has nearly quadrupled in twenty-five years,
Increase in the value of railroad tonnage,

Table of the railroad mileage of each country in the world,
Increase of bank clearings in the United States and

England,

Extent of the economization of currency by the clearing-

house system,

Agencies at work toward a new financial era,

The silver dollar the unit,

Half dollars, their legal weights and values,

167

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170-182

170, 171, 175, 176

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Legal method of computing the value of the pound sterling,

Laws authorizing the issue and redemption of United States

notes and bonds, chronologically arranged, from 1860

to 1876,

United States notes made legal-tender for all debts,
except duties on imports and interest on the public
debt; Acts Feb. 25, 1862; July 11, 1862, and March
3, 1863,
Made receivable the same as coin for all loans nego-
tiated by the United States; Act Feb. 25, 1862,

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186, 189, 190, 191

THE MONEY SYMBOLS.

N the cover of this book are grouped, in one design,

ON

the three emblems from which are derived the dollar symbol, $, and the pound-sterling symbol, L. The most prominent and interesting feature of the group is the two pillars, which were derived from the pillars of Hercules, one of the oldest symbols known to the human race. Their composition with the money symbols is due entirely to the emperor Charles the Fifth of Germany, who being also king of Spain adopted them as supporters on either side of his escutcheon, and also placed them in the device on the Spanish "pillar dollar" of the value of fifty-four pence sterling, which became the unit of Federal money in America, and upon the basis of which the pound sterling was valued at $4.44.44. Charles derived the idea from the poetic conceit which gave the name of "Pillars of Hercules" to the two mountains which stand on either side the Straits of Gibraltar, viz.: Calpe, or the Rock of Gibraltar, on the north, and Mount Abyla, in Africa, on the south. The scroll, which in the device on the dollar was twined about the pillars, has by long use been gradually modified, in making the symbol with the pen, so as to assume its present form in the dollar-mark. It is also presumed that in the pound-mark the was substituted for the scroll, thus still retaining the two pillars which

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