What is meant by the value of money? The significance of the term can best be understood by regarding it as the converse of the term "value of com-modities." When we speak of the price of a given group of commodities as $100 we mean that they will exchange for a quantity of money or its equivalent expressed by the figure 100. The term "dollar," "pound sterling," " franc," would have no meaning were it not for statutes in the countries whose standards they are, requiring that they shall represent a specified number of grains of gold, or, in some conditions, of silver. The value of commodities then may be regarded as the quantity of standard metal, represented by a term legally defined (as dollar, pound sterling, franc, etc.), or the equivalent thereof in some other form, which they can command. Strictly speaking, however, the value of commodities expressed in terms of money is technically at least the quantity of the standard metal for which they will exchange. Reversing this conception, it is clear that the value of money means the quantity of commodities for which a given unit or amount of the precious metal which is accepted as money will exchange. Thus in the case of the group of commodities whose value was taken as $100 above, the value of 100 is the aggregate of commodities constituting the group already referred to. The difficulty in reversing the terms and using them interchangeably lies in the fact that, whereas money is a single commodity, other items of goods vary. Strictly speaking, therefore, the value of money must be taken as the total amount of all existing commodities that can be bought at a given time, for which a unit of money would exchange. This concept, as readily appears, is unwieldy for ordinary use. Since we can never tell exactly what commodities money will be offered for, and since not all commodities are constantly or freely bought, the term "value" of money is very much looser than the term "value of goods" or "value of commodities."