Now, it was the turn of the other officers in the tent to look befuddled. As well they should. They knew as well as David did that the Saxon thaler-which until this spring was supposedly backed by silver-was worth bupkis compared to the American dollar that was paper backed by nothing but "I said so."
"Can he even do that?" asked Captain Theobold Auerbach. He was the commander of the artillery battery that had been transferred to Jeff's unit from the Freiheit Regiment.
Bartley scratched his head. "Well . . . It's kind of complicated, Theo. First, there's no law on the books that prevents him from doing it."
Auerbach frowned. "I thought the dollar-"
But David was already shaking his head. "No, that's a common misconception. The dollar is issued by the USE and is recognized as its legal tender, sure enough. But no law has ever been passed that makes it the nation's exclusive currency." The people who had the traditional right to mint money would never have stood for it.
"Ah! I hadn't realized that," said Thorsten. The slight frown on his face vanished. "There's no problem then, from a legal standpoint, unless the prime minister or General Torstensson tells him he can't do it. But I don't see any reason to even mention it to anyone outside the division yet. Right now, we're just dealing with our own logistical needs."
The expressions on the faces of all the down-timers in the tent mirrored Engler's. But Jeff Higgins was still frowning.
"I don't get it. You mean to tell me the USE allows any currency to be used within its borders?"
He seemed quite aggrieved, David noted with a grin.
"You're like most up-timers," David said, "especially ones who don't know much history. The situation we have now is no different from what it was for the first seventy-five years or so of the United States-our old one, back in America. There was an official United States currency-the dollar, of course-but the main currency used by most Americans was the Spanish real. The name 'dollar' itself comes from the Spanish dollar, a coin that was worth eight reales. It wasn't until the Civil War that the U.S. dollar was made the only legal currency."
"I'll be damned," said Jeff. "I didn't know that."
He wasn't in the least bit discomfited. As was true for most Americans, being charged with historical ignorance was like sprinkling water on a duck.
Colonel Higgins stood and stretched. "What you're saying, in other words, is that there's technically no reason-legal reason, I mean-that the Third Division couldn't issue its own currency."
"That's right." Well it was right as far as it went, which wasn't very far.
A frown was back on Captain Auerbach's face. "I can't think of any army that's ever done so, though."
David didn't say what do you think the chits we've been passing out are? It wouldn't do any good. "So? We're doing lots of new things."
"Let's take it to the general," said Jeff, heading for the tent flap. "We haven't got much time, since he's planning to resume the march tomorrow."
****
General Stearns was charmed by the idea. "Sure, let's do it. D'you need me to leave one of the printing presses behind?"
"Probably a good idea, sir." David said. "I can afford to buy one easily enough. The problem is that I don't know what's available in the area, and we're familiar with the ones the division brought along."
"Done. Anything else you need?"
David and Jeff looked at each other. Then Jeff said: "Well, we need a name for the currency. We don't want to call it scrip, of course."
Mike scowled. "Company scrip" was pretty much a profane term among West Virginia coal miners.
"No, we sure as hell don't," he said forcefully. He scratched his chin for a few seconds, and then smiled.
"Let's call it a 'becky,'" he said. "Third Division beckies."
****
Sergeant Beckmann was seated at a little folding table in their room of the castle. "Not to get all philosophical or anything, sir, but what is money?"
Johan Kipper groaned and David grinned. "Be thankful you didn't ask that of one of the economists at the Fed or Treasury. Best I've been able to tell from their lectures on the subject is that it's just IOUs."
"Of course, if you say that to one of them," Johan said, "they'll spend hours telling you that it's not just IOUs, but takes on the demonic aspect of IOUs, not the angelic aspect or vice versa. And that in its true platonic form, money is a store of wealth . . ."
"Now, now, Johan. Sarah isn't that bad," David said with a lack of confidence that even he could hear in his own voice.
"IOUs?" Sergeant Beckmann asked. "I owe you whats?"
"That's the tricky part," David acknowledged. "Money has quantity but not form, not kind. It's an IOU for a given amount of wealth of no specific nature. The nature of the wealth gets determined when you buy something with it. And not just the nature, but the quantity, too. The IOU has a quantity on it but what that quantity is worth in terms of actual goods gets determined by what you can and what you can't buy with it. Which is determined by what the person you're trading it to thinks they can trade it for and on and on ad infinitum."
"See?" Johan said. "Angels dancing on the head of a pin."
David snorted but nodded.
"So we issue money IOUs and pass them around to trade stuff?"
"Yes."
"Sounds like a great way to make a living." Sergeant Beckmann grinned like the unrepentant conman he was. "What's the catch?"
"Normally, the catch is getting people to accept the money," David said. "In the up-time timeline the transition from gold and silver to paper took centuries and there were still people that had little caches of gold and silver coins when the Ring of Fire happened. In the new timeline, people right around the Ring of Fire accepted our money at first because we were a miracle. Even if people like General Stearns don't much like acknowledging it. But it was also because we had stuff to sell and our money bought it. How much of that first acceptance was God and how much was goods we may never know, but we had both.
"General Stearns has an international reputation and if the Prince of Germany decides to issue money, a lot of people will accept it. Why not? If the count of nowhere important can issue money, why can't the Prince of Germany?"
David looked around the room and saw that Sergeant Beckmann was nodding but Johan Kipper wasn't.
"Some of it was God right enough," Johan said, "but more of it was goods. Yes, the merchants and craftsmen we dealt with in those first days were willing to cut us some slack because you were up-timers and they didn't want to piss off whoever had sent you here. But mostly it was that they knew that the American dollars would spend in the Ring of Fire and having American dollars to spend made great excuse to go into the Ring of Fire and see the television video tapes and other wonders they'd heard about."