John Jones's Dollar Read online

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  JOHN JONES'S DOLLAR

  By HARRY STEPHEN KEELER

  _Take a board with 64 squares on it. Put a grain of wheat on the first square--two on the second--four on the third. Keep doubling in this manner and you will find there isn't enough wheat in the world to fill the sixty-fourth square. It can be the same with compound interest._

  On the 201st day of the year 3221 A.D., the professor of history at theUniversity of Terra seated himself in front of the Visaphone andprepared to deliver the daily lecture to his class, the members of whichresided in different portions of the earth.

  The instrument before which he seated himself was very like a greatwindow sash, on account of the fact that there were three or fourhundred frosted glass squares visible. In a space at the center, notoccupied by any of these glass squares, was a dark oblong area and aledge holding a piece of chalk. And above the area was a huge brasscylinder; toward this brass cylinder the professor would soon directhis subsequent remarks.

  In order to assure himself that it was time to press the button whichwould notify the members of the class in history to approach their localVisaphones, the professor withdrew from his vest pocket a smallcontrivance which he held to his ear. Upon moving a tiny switch attachedto the instrument, a metallic voice, seeming to come from somewhere inspace, repeated mechanically: "Fifteen o'clock and one minute--fifteeno'clock and one minute--fifteen o'clock and one min--" Quickly, theprofessor replaced the instrument in his vest pocket and pressed abutton at the side of the Visaphone.

  As though in answer to the summons, the frosted squares began, one byone, to show the faces and shoulders of a peculiar type of young men;young men with great bulging foreheads, bald, toothless, and wearingimmense horn spectacles. One square, however, still remained empty. Onnoticing this, a look of irritation passed over the professor'scountenance.

  But, seeing that every other glass square but this one was filled up, hecommenced to talk.

  "I am pleased, gentlemen, to see you all posted at your local Visaphonesthis afternoon. I have prepared my lecture today upon a subject whichis, perhaps, of more economic interest than historical. Unlike theprevious lectures, my talk will not confine itself to the happenings ofa few years, but will gradually embrace the course of ten centuries, theten centuries, in fact, which terminated three hundred years before thepresent date. My lecture will be an exposition of the effects of theJohn Jones Dollar, originally deposited in the dawn of civilization, orto be more precise, in the year of 1921--just thirteen hundred yearsago. This John Jon--"

  At this point in the professor's lecture, the frosted glass square whichhitherto had shown no image, now filled up. Sternly he gazed at the headand shoulders that had just appeared.

  "B262H72476Male, you are late to class again. What excuse have you tooffer today?"

  From the hollow cylinder emanated a shrill voice, while the lips of thepicture on the glass square moved in unison with the words:

  "Professor, you will perceive by consulting your class book, that I haverecently taken up my residence near the North Pole. For some reason,wireless communication between the Central Energy Station and all pointsnorth of 89 degrees was cut off a while ago, on account of which fact Icould not appear in the Visaphone. Hence--"

  "Enough, sir," roared the professor. "Always ready with an excuse,B262H72476Male. I shall immediately investigate your tale."

  From his coat pocket, the professor withdrew an instrument which,although supplied with an earpiece and a mouthpiece, had no wireswhatever attached. Raising it to his lips, he spoke:

  "Hello. Central Energy Station, please." A pause ensued. "Central EnergyStation? This is the professor of history at the University of Terra,speaking. One of my students informs me that the North Pole region wasout of communication with the Visaphone System this morning. Is thatstatement true? I would--"

  A voice, apparently from nowhere, spoke into the professor's ear. "Quitetrue, Professor. A train of our ether waves accidently fell intoparallelism with a train of waves from the Venus Substation. By the mostpeculiar mischance, the two trains happened to be displaced, withreference to each other, one half of a wave length, with the unfortunateresult that the negative points of one coincided with the positivepoints of maximum amplitude of the other. Hence the two wave trainsnullified each other and communication ceased for one hundred andeighty-five seconds--until the earth had revolved far enough to throwthem out of parallelism."

  "Ah! Thank you," replied the professor. He dropped his instrument intohis coat pocket and gazed in the direction of the glass square whoseimage had so aroused his ire. "I apologize, B262H72476Male, for mysuspicions as to your veracity--but I had in mind several formerexperiences." He shook a warning forefinger. "I will now resume mytalk."

  "A moment ago, gentlemen, I mentioned the John Jones Dollar. Some of youwho have just enrolled with the class will undoubtedly say toyourselves: 'What is a John Jones? What is a Dollar?'

  "In the early days, before the present scientific registration of humanbeings was instituted by the National Eugenics Society, man went aroundunder a crude multi-reduplicative system of nomenclature. Under thissystem there were actually more John Joneses than there are calories ina British Thermal Unit. But there was one John Jones, in particular,living in the twentieth century, to whom I shall refer in my lecture.Not much is known of his personal life except that he was an ardentsocialist--a bitter enemy, in fact, of the private ownership of wealth.

  "Now as to the Dollar. At this day, when the Psycho-Erg, a combinationof the Psych, the unit of esthetic satisfaction, and the Erg, the unitof mechanical energy, is recognized as the true unit of value, it seemsdifficult to believe that in the twentieth century and for more than tencenturies thereafter, the Dollar, a metallic circular disk, was beingpassed from hand to hand in exchange for the essentials of life.

  "But nevertheless, such was the case. Man exchanged his mental orphysical energy for these Dollars. He then re-exchanged the Dollars forsustenance, raiment, pleasure, and operations for the removal of thevermiform appendix.

  "A great many individuals, however, deposited their Dollars in astronghold called a bank. These banks invested the Dollars in loans andcommercial enterprises, with the result that, every time the earthtraversed the solar ecliptic, the banks compelled each borrower torepay, or to acknowledge as due, the original loan, plus sixone-hundredths of that loan. And to the depositor, the banks paid threeone-hundredths of the deposited Dollars for the use of the disks. Thiswas known as three percent, or bank interest.

  "Now, the safety of Dollars, when deposited in banks, was not absolutelyassured to the depositor. At times, the custodians of these Dollars werewont to appropriate them and proceed to portions of the earth, sparselyinhabited and accessible with difficulty. And at other times, nomadicgroups known as 'yeggmen' visited the banks, opened the vaults by force,and departed, carrying with them the contents.

  "But to return to our subject. In the year 1921, one of these numerousJohn Joneses performed an apparently inconsequential action which causedthe name of John Jones to go down in history. What did he do?

  "He proceeded to one of these banks, known at that time as 'The FirstNational Bank of Chicago,' and deposited there, one of these disks--asilver Dollar--to the credit of a certain individual. And thisindividual to whose credit the Dollar was deposited was no other personthan the fortieth descendant of John Jones who stipulated in paper whichwas placed in the files of the bank, that the descendancy was to takeplace along the oldest child of each of the generations which wouldconstitute his posterity.

  "The bank accepted the Dollar under that understanding, togeth
er withanother condition imposed by this John Jones, namely, that the interestwas to be compounded annually. That meant that at the close of eachyear, the bank was to credit the account of John Jones's fortiethdescendant with three one-hundredths of the account as it stood at thebeginning of the year.

  "History tells us little more concerning this John Jones--only that hedied in the year 1931, or ten years afterward, leaving several children.

  "Now you gentlemen who are taking mathematics under ProfessorL127M72421Male, of the University of Mars, will remember that where anynumber such as X, in passing through a progressive cycle of change,grows at the end of that cycle by a proportion p, then the value of theoriginal X, after n cycles, becomes X(1 + p)^n.

  "Obviously, in this case, X equalled one Dollar; p equalled threeone-hundredths; and n will depend upon any