Customer Reviews

Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821

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Despite it's seemingly specialized, historical subject, Good Money is really both very topical and very important. The story it tells--of private coinage during the Industrial Revolution--directly challenges the conventional wisdom that's at the foundation of all modern monetary systems, namely, the belief that only government's are fit to supply coins and paper money. Selgin shows that this was far from being the case in 18th-century England. There the government proved itself perfectly unfit to coin money, until private mints showed it how to do its job right! The story of how they designed the world's first successful industrial-scale coinage system, and of how the government ultimately put them out of business, is absolutely spellbinding! No one who reads it can ever look at a central bank or government-run mint without wondering how much better off the world might have been without it!

The scene: Birmingham, England, in the steamy, sooty grip of the Industrial Revolution. George Selgin tells the "riveting" tale of a group of eccentric entrepreneurs who take on not only each other, but the Royal Mint and the British Crown in their bids to supply a burgeoning working class with desperately needed copper and silver coins. The result: a yarn as colorfully amusing as one of Dickens' more ambitious novels, but entirely true, and one that offers up an economics lesson to boot: namely, that good money really does drive out bad--that is, as long as governments stay out of it (as soon as they don't Gersham's Law kicks in). If you love a great story, if you adore larger-than-life characters, if you put a premium on fine prose, do yourself a favor and buy Good Money. It will be well worth yours.

Well researched and generally well written. Some of the middle chapters can get a little tedious with the historical detail lavished on the Soho Mint, but other than that it is a historical gem! All you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask about the fascinating economic underpinnings of the Industrial Revolution and the cultural milieu within which it was rooted.