John Jones's Dollar

: John Jones's Dollar

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 the

University of Terra seated hi
self in front of the Visaphone and

prepared to deliver the daily lecture to his class, the members of which

resided in different portions of the earth.



The instrument before which he seated himself was very like a great

window sash, on account of the fact that there were three or four

hundred frosted glass squares visible. In a space at the center, not

occupied by any of these glass squares, was a dark oblong area and a

ledge holding a piece of chalk. And above the area was a huge brass

cylinder; toward this brass cylinder the professor would soon direct

his subsequent remarks.



In order to assure himself that it was time to press the button which

would notify the members of the class in history to approach their local

Visaphones, the professor withdrew from his vest pocket a small

contrivance which he held to his ear. Upon moving a tiny switch attached

to the instrument, a metallic voice, seeming to come from somewhere in

space, repeated mechanically: "Fifteen o'clock and one minute--fifteen

o'clock and one minute--fifteen o'clock and one min--" Quickly, the

professor replaced the instrument in his vest pocket and pressed a

button at the side of the Visaphone.



As though in answer to the summons, the frosted squares began, one by

one, to show the faces and shoulders of a peculiar type of young men;

young men with great bulging foreheads, bald, toothless, and wearing

immense horn spectacles. One square, however, still remained empty. On

noticing this, a look of irritation passed over the professor's

countenance.



But, seeing that every other glass square but this one was filled up, he

commenced to talk.



"I am pleased, gentlemen, to see you all posted at your local Visaphones

this afternoon. I have prepared my lecture today upon a subject which

is, perhaps, of more economic interest than historical. Unlike the

previous lectures, my talk will not confine itself to the happenings of

a few years, but will gradually embrace the course of ten centuries, the

ten centuries, in fact, which terminated three hundred years before the

present date. My lecture will be an exposition of the effects of the

John Jones Dollar, originally deposited in the dawn of civilization, or

to be more precise, in the year of 1921--just thirteen hundred years

ago. This John Jon--"



At this point in the professor's lecture, the frosted glass square which

hitherto had shown no image, now filled up. Sternly he gazed at the head

and shoulders that had just appeared.



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

offer today?"



From the hollow cylinder emanated a shrill voice, while the lips of the

picture on the glass square moved in unison with the words:



"Professor, you will perceive by consulting your class book, that I have

recently taken up my residence near the North Pole. For some reason,

wireless communication between the Central Energy Station and all points

north of 89 degrees was cut off a while ago, on account of which fact I

could 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 wires

whatever attached. Raising it to his lips, he spoke:



"Hello. Central Energy Station, please." A pause ensued. "Central Energy

Station? This is the professor of history at the University of Terra,

speaking. One of my students informs me that the North Pole region was

out of communication with the Visaphone System this morning. Is that

statement true? I would--"



A voice, apparently from nowhere, spoke into the professor's ear. "Quite

true, Professor. A train of our ether waves accidently fell into

parallelism with a train of waves from the Venus Substation. By the most

peculiar mischance, the two trains happened to be displaced, with

reference to each other, one half of a wave length, with the unfortunate

result that the negative points of one coincided with the positive

points of maximum amplitude of the other. Hence the two wave trains

nullified each other and communication ceased for one hundred and

eighty-five seconds--until the earth had revolved far enough to throw

them out of parallelism."



"Ah! Thank you," replied the professor. He dropped his instrument into

his coat pocket and gazed in the direction of the glass square whose

image had so aroused his ire. "I apologize, B262H72476Male, for my

suspicions as to your veracity--but I had in mind several former

experiences." He shook a warning forefinger. "I will now resume my

talk."



"A moment ago, gentlemen, I mentioned the John Jones Dollar. Some of you

who have just enrolled with the class will undoubtedly say to

yourselves: 'What is a John Jones? What is a Dollar?'



"In the early days, before the present scientific registration of human

beings was instituted by the National Eugenics Society, man went around

under a crude multi-reduplicative system of nomenclature. Under this

system there were actually more John Joneses than there are calories in

a 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 ardent

socialist--a bitter enemy, in fact, of the private ownership of wealth.



"Now as to the Dollar. At this day, when the Psycho-Erg, a combination

of the Psych, the unit of esthetic satisfaction, and the Erg, the unit

of mechanical energy, is recognized as the true unit of value, it seems

difficult to believe that in the twentieth century and for more than ten

centuries thereafter, the Dollar, a metallic circular disk, was being

passed from hand to hand in exchange for the essentials of life.



"But nevertheless, such was the case. Man exchanged his mental or

physical energy for these Dollars. He then re-exchanged the Dollars for

sustenance, raiment, pleasure, and operations for the removal of the

vermiform appendix.



"A great many individuals, however, deposited their Dollars in a

stronghold called a bank. These banks invested the Dollars in loans and

commercial enterprises, with the result that, every time the earth

traversed the solar ecliptic, the banks compelled each borrower to

repay, or to acknowledge as due, the original loan, plus six

one-hundredths of that loan. And to the depositor, the banks paid three

one-hundredths of the deposited Dollars for the use of the disks. This

was known as three percent, or bank interest.



"Now, the safety of Dollars, when deposited in banks, was not absolutely

assured to the depositor. At times, the custodians of these Dollars were

wont to appropriate them and proceed to portions of the earth, sparsely

inhabited and accessible with difficulty. And at other times, nomadic

groups 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 numerous

John Joneses performed an apparently inconsequential action which caused

the 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 First

National Bank of Chicago,' and deposited there, one of these disks--a

silver Dollar--to the credit of a certain individual. And this

individual to whose credit the Dollar was deposited was no other person

than the fortieth descendant of John Jones who stipulated in paper which

was placed in the files of the bank, that the descendancy was to take

place along the oldest child of each of the generations which would

constitute his posterity.



"The bank accepted the Dollar under that understanding, together with

another condition imposed by this John Jones, namely, that the interest

was to be compounded annually. That meant that at the close of each

year, the bank was to credit the account of John Jones's fortieth

descendant with three one-hundredths of the account as it stood at the

beginning of the year.



"History tells us little more concerning this John Jones--only that he

died in the year 1931, or ten years afterward, leaving several children.



"Now you gentlemen who are taking mathematics under Professor

L127M72421Male, of the University of Mars, will remember that where any

number 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 the

original X, after n cycles, becomes X(1 + p)^n.



"Obviously, in this case, X equalled one Dollar; p equalled three

one-hundredths; and n will depend upon any number of years which we care

to consider, following the date of deposit. By a simple calculation,

those of you who are today mentally alert can check up the results that

I shall set forth in my lecture.



"At the time that John Jones died, the amount in the First National Bank

of Chicago to the credit of John Jones the fortieth, was as follows."



The professor seized the chalk and wrote rapidly upon the oblong space:



1931 10 years elapsed $1.34



"The peculiar sinuous hieroglyphic," he explained, "is an ideograph

representing the Dollar.



"Well, gentlemen, time went on as time will, until a hundred years had

passed by. The First National Bank still existed, and the locality,

Chicago, had become the largest center of population upon the earth.

Through the investments which had taken place, and the yearly

compounding of interest, the status of John Jones's deposit was now as

follows." He wrote:



2021 100 years elapsed $19.10



"In the following century, many minor changes, of course, took place in

man's mode of living; but the so-called socialists still agitated widely

for the cessation of private ownership of wealth; the First National

Bank still accepted Dollars for safe keeping, and the John Jones Dollar

still continued to grow. With about thirty-four generations yet to come,

the account now stood:



2121 200 years elapsed $364



"And by the end of the succeeding hundred years, it had grown to what

constituted an appreciable bit of exchange value in those days--thus:



2221 300 years $6,920



"Now the century which followed contains an important date. The date I

am referring to is the year 2299 A.D., or the year in which every human

being born upon the globe was registered under a numerical name at the

central bureau of the National Eugenics Society. In our future lessons

which will treat with that period of detail, I shall ask you to memorize

that date.



"The socialists still agitated, fruitlessly, but the First National Bank

of Chicago was now the first International Bank of the Earth. And how

great had John Jones's Dollar grown? Let us examine the account, both on

that important historical date, and also at the close of the 400th year

since it was deposited. Look:



2299 378 years $68,900

2321 400 years $132,000



"But gentlemen, it had not reached the point where it could be termed an

unusually large accumulation of wealth. For larger accumulations existed

upon the earth. A descendant of a man once known as John D. Rockefeller

possessed an accumulation of great size, but which, as a matter of

fact, was rapidly dwindling as it passed from generation to generation.

So, let us travel ahead another one hundred years. During this time, as

we learn from our historical and political archives, the socialists

began to die out, since they at last realized the utter futility of

combating the balance of power. The account, though, now stood:



2421 500 years $2,520,000



"It is hardly necessary for me to make any comment. Those of you who are

most astute, and others of you who flunked my course before and are now

taking it the second time, of course know what is coming.



"During the age in which this John Jones lived, there lived also a man,

a so-called scientist called Metchnikoff. We know, from a study of our

vast collection of Egyptian Papyri and Carnegie Library books, that this

Metchnikoff promulgated the theory that old age--or rather senility--was

caused by colon-bacillus. This fact was later verified. But while he was

correct in the etiology of senility, he was crudely primeval in the

therapeutics of it.



"He proposed, gentlemen, to combat and kill this bacillus by utilizing

the fermented lacteal fluid from a now extinct animal called the cow,

models of which you can see at any time at the Solaris Museum."



A chorus of shrill, piping laughter emanated from the brass cylinder.

The professor waited until the merriment had subsided and then

continued:



"I beg of you, gentlemen, do not smile. This was merely one of the many

similar quaint superstitions existing in that age.



"But a real scientist, Professor K122B62411Male, again attacked the

problem in the twenty-fifth century. Since the cow was now extinct, he

could not waste his valuable time experimenting with fermented cow

lacteal fluid. He discovered the old v-rays of Radium--the rays which

you physicists will remember are not deflected by a magnetic field--were

really composed of two sets of rays, which he termed the g rays and

the e rays. These last named rays--only when isolated--completely

devitalized all colon-bacilli which lay in their path, without in the

least affecting the integrity of any interposed organic cells. The great

result, as many of you already know, was that the life of man was

extended to nearly two hundred years. That, I state unequivocally, was a

great century for the human race.



* * * * *



"But I spoke of another happening--one, perhaps, of more interest than

importance. I referred to the bank account of John Jones the fortieth.

It, gentlemen, had grown to such a prodigious sum that a special bank

and board of directors had to be created in order to care for, and

reinvest it. By scanning the following notation, you will perceive the

truth of my statement:



2521 600 years $47,900,000



"By the year 2621 A.D., two events of stupendous importance took place.

There is scarcely a man in this class who has not heard of how Professor

P222D29333Male accidentally stumbled upon the scientific fact that the

effect of gravity is reversed upon any body which vibrates

perpendicularly to the plane of the ecliptic with a frequency which is

an even multiple of the logarithm of 2 of the Naperian base 'e.' At

once, special vibrating cars were constructed which carried mankind to

all planets. That discovery of Professor P222D29333Male did nothing less

than open up seven new territories to our inhabitants; namely: Mercury,

Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. In the great land

rush that ensued, thousands who were previously poor became rich.



"But, gentlemen, land which so far had been constituted one of the main

sources of wealth, was shortly to become valuable for individual golf

links only, as it is today, on account of another scientific discovery.



"This second discovery was in reality, not a discovery, but the

perfection of a chemical process, the principles of which had been known

for many centuries. I am alluding to the construction of the vast

reducing factories, one upon each planet, to which the bodies of all

persons who have died on their respective planets are at once shipped by

Aerial Express. Since this process is used today, all of you understand

the methods employed; how each body is reduced by heat to its component

constituents: hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, calcium, phosphorus,

and so forth; how these separated constituents are stored in special

reservoirs together with the components from thousands of other corpses;

how these elements are then synthetically combined into food tablets for

those of us who are yet alive--thus completing an endless chain from the

dead to the living. Naturally then, agriculture and stock-raising

ceased, since the food problem, with which man had coped from time

immemorial, was solved. The two direct results were, first--that land

lost the inflated values it had possessed when it was necessary for

tillage, and second--that men were at last given enough leisure to enter

the fields of science and art.



"And as to the John Jones Dollar, which now embraced countless

industries and vast territory on the earth, it stood, in value:



2621 700 years $912,000,000



"In truth, gentlemen, it now constituted the largest private fortune on

the terrestrial globe. And in that year, 2621 A.D., there were thirteen

generations yet to come, before John Jones the fortieth would arrive.



"To continue. In the year 2721 A.D., an important political battle was

concluded in the Solar System Senate and House of Representatives. I am

referring to the great controversy as to whether the Earth's moon was a

sufficient menace to interplanetary navigation to warrant its removal.

The outcome of the wrangle was that the question was decided in the

affirmative. Consequently--



"But I beg your pardon, young men. I occasionally lose sight of the fact

that you are not so well informed upon historical matters as myself.

Here I am, talking to you about the moon, totally forgetful that many of

you are puzzled as to my meaning. I advise all of you who have not yet

attended the Solaris Museum on Jupiter, to take a trip there some Sunday

afternoon. The Interplanetary Suburban Line runs trains every half hour

on that day. You will find there a complete working model of the old

satellite of the Earth, which, before it was destroyed, furnished this

planet light at night through the crude medium of reflection.



"On account of this decision as to the inadvisability of allowing the

moon to remain where it was, engineers commenced its removal in the year

2721. Piece by piece, it was chipped away and brought to the Earth in

Interplanetary freight cars. These pieces were then propelled by

Zoodolite explosive, in the direction of the Milky Way, with a velocity

of 11,217 meters per second. This velocity, of course, gave each

departing fragment exactly the amount of kinetic energy it required to

enable it to overcome the backward pull of the Earth from here to

infinity. I dare say those moon-hunks are going yet.



"At the start of the removal of the moon in 2721 A.D., the accumulated

wealth of John Jones the fortieth, stood:



2721 800 years $17,400,000,000



"Of course, with such a colossal sum at their command, the directors of

the fund had made extensive investments on Mars and Venus.



"By the end of the twenty-eighth century, or the year 2807 A.D., the

moon had been completely hacked away and sent piecemeal into space, the

job having required 86 years. I give, herewith, the result of John

Jones's Dollar, both at the date when the moon was completely removed

and also at the close of the 900th year after its deposit:



2807 886 years $219,000,000,000

2821 900 years $332,000,000,000



"The meaning of those figures, gentlemen, as stated in simple language,

was that the John Jones Dollar now comprised practically all the wealth

on Earth, Mars, and Venus--with the exception of one university site on

each planet, which was, of course, school property.



"And now I will ask you to advance with me to the year 2906 A.D. In this

year the directors of the John Jones fund awoke to the fact that they

were in a dreadful predicament. According to the agreement under which

John Jones deposited his Dollar away back in the year 1921, interest was

to be compounded annually at three percent. In the year 2900 A.D., the

thirty-ninth generation of John Jones was alive, being represented by a

gentleman named J664M42721Male, who was thirty years of age and engaged

to be married to a young lady named T246M42652Female.



"Doubtless, you will ask, what was the predicament in which the

directors found themselves. Simply this:



"A careful appraisement of the wealth on Neptune, Uranus, Saturn,

Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury, and likewise Earth, together with an

accurate calculation of the remaining heat in the Sun and an

appraisement of that heat at a very decent valuation per calorie,

demonstrated that the total wealth of the Solar System amounted to

$6,309,525,241,362.15.



"But unfortunately, a simple computation showed that if Mr.

J664M42721Male married Miss T246M42652Female, and was blessed by a child

by the year 2921, which year marked the thousandth year since the

deposit of the John Jones Dollar, then in that year there would be due

the child, the following amount:



2921 1,000 years $6,310,000,000,000



"It simply showed beyond all possibility of argument, that by 2921 A.D.,

we would be $474,758,637.85 shy--that we would be unable to meet the

debt to John Jones the fortieth.



"I tell you, gentlemen, the Board of Directors was frantic. Such wild

suggestions were put forth as the sending of an expeditionary force to

the nearest star in order to capture some other Solar System and thus

obtain more territory to make up the deficit. But that project was

impossible on account of the number of years that it would have

required.



"Visions of immense law suits disturbed the slumber of those unfortunate

individuals who formed the John Jones Dollar Directorship. But on the

brink of one of the biggest civil actions the courts had ever known,

something occurred that altered everything."



The professor again withdrew the tiny instrument from his vest pocket,

held it to his ear and adjusted the switch. A metallic voice rasped:

"Fifteen o'clock and fifty-two minutes--fifteen o'clock and fifty-two

minutes--fift--" He replaced the instrument and went on with his talk.



"I must hasten to the conclusion of my lecture, gentlemen, as I have an

engagement with Professor C122B24999Male of the University of Saturn at

sixteen o'clock. Now, let me see; I was discussing the big civil action

that was hanging over the heads of the John Jones Dollar directors.



"Well, this Mr. J664M42721Male, the thirty-ninth descendant of the

original John Jones, had a lover's quarrel with Miss T246M42652Female,

which immediately destroyed the probability of their marriage. Neither

gave in to the other. Neither ever married. And when Mr. J664M42721Male

died in 2946 A.D., of a broken heart, as it was claimed, he was single

and childless.



"As a result, there was no one to turn the Solar System over to.

Immediately, the Interplanetary Government stepped in and took

possession of it. At that instant, of course, private property ceased.

In the twinkling of an eye almost, we reached the true socialistic and

democratic condition for which man had futilely hoped throughout the

ages.



"That is all today, gentlemen. Class is dismissed."



One by one, the faces faded from the Visaphone.



For a moment, the professor stood ruminating.



"A wonderful man, that old socialist, John Jones the first," he said

softly to himself, "a farseeing man, a bright man, considering that he

lived in such a dark era as the twentieth century. But how nearly his

well-contrived scheme went wrong. Suppose that fortieth descendant had

been born?"



More

;