That is the condition of Spain and Cuba at this moment.

In Cuba General Weyler has ordered a large amount of paper money issued.
The banks have been obliged to obey him; but as every one knows that no
coin has been deposited in the Treasury to make the paper notes good,
people do not care to take them.

General Weyler says that Spain will make the notes good at the end of
the war; but as no one believes him, the paper money has steadily fallen
in value.

Falling in value, you must understand, means that the merchant will not
give a dollar's worth of goods in exchange for a dollar note.

In Cuba the merchants began by giving but ninety cents' worth of goods
for the dollar; but as the war has continued and the poverty of Spain
has become plainer, they have given less and less, until now they will
only give thirty cents' worth of goods in exchange for the paper dollar.

During the late war in the South, the Confederates issued paper money,
which they promised to redeem as soon as the war was over, but for which
they had no coin to deposit.

Toward the close of the war, when the Southern cause had become
hopeless, and the people feared the paper money might never be redeemed,
$150 Confederate money often had to be paid to get a pair of shoes
soled, and twenty-five to fifty paper dollars were demanded in exchange
for a loaf of bread.

Of course the United States did not redeem this money when the war was