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         THE STRANGE STORY OF

          JOHN JONES' DOLLAR

       By Harry Stephen Keeler


    0n the 201st day of the year 3285
A.D., the professor of history at the
University of Terra seated himself in
front of his Chromo-Visaphone and
prepared to deliver his 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 this area
was a peculiar-looking microphone,
suspended by two hair-like springs,
toward which the professor directed
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
Chromo-Visaphones, the professor
withdrew from his vest pocket, a tiny
contrivance no larger than a quarter,
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 Chromo-Visaphone.

    As though in answer to the
summons, the frosted glass squares
began, one by one, to show -- in
absolutely perfect hue and tint and
color and shade -- the faces and
shoulders of a peculiar type of young
men; young men with great bulging
foreheads, bald, toothless, and
wearing immense square horn
spectacles. One square, however,
still remained empty. On noticing
this, a look of irritation passed
over the professor's countenance.

    But, upon seeing that every other
glass square but this one was filled
up, he commenced his talk.

    "I am pleased, gentlemen, to see
you all posted at your local Chromo-
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
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 1935 -- 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 red 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,
radio 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 Chromo-
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 Stations 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 Chromo-
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 accidentally fell
into parallelism with a train of
waves of identical wave-length from
the Venus Sub-station. 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 points of negative
maximum amplitude of one coincided
with the points of positive 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
apologise, B262H72476Male, for my
suspicions as to your veracity -- but
I had in mind several former
experiences." He shook a warning
forefinger. "I shall 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. In 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 acknowledge as due the
original, 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
per cent, 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. Again, the banks, at
times, tiring, presumably, of
banking, failed to open their doors,
facetiously notifying their clients
that they were 'frozen". I say
'facetiously' because it is obvious
that a bank in a tropical or semi-
tropical clime could not suffer a
calorific change amounting to a
downright glaciation.

    But, be that as it may, they did
not thereafter open up, and many of
the Dollars deposited therein
automatically ceased to exist, due to
the vagaries of higher accounting.
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 1935, one of these numerous
John Joneses performed an apparently
inconsequential action which caused
the name of John Jones to go down
forever 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
s certain individual. And this
individual to whose credit the Dollar
was deposited was no other person
than the fortieth descendant of John
Jones, which John Jones stipulated in
a paper that 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'
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 1945, 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 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) to the N power.

    "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:

 1945   10 years elapsed   $1.84

    "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. This First National Bank
still existed, and the locality,
Chicago, had become the largest
center of population upon the earth.
Through the investments that had
taken place, and the yearly
compounding of interest, the status
of John Jones' deposit was now as
follows." He wrote:

 2035   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 Communists still agitated
wildly 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:

 2135   200 years elapsed   $864.00

    "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:

 2235   800 years   $6920

    "Now the century which follows
contains an important date. The date
I am referring to is the year 2313
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 in detail, I shall ask you to
memorize that date.

    "The Socialists and Communists
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' 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:

 2313   378 years   $68,900

 2335   400 years   $132,000

    "But, gentlemen, it had not yet
reached a point where it could be
termed an unusually large
accumulation of wealth. Far larger
accumulations existed upon the earth.
A descendant of a man once known as
John D. Rockefeller, III, 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 hundred years.
During this time, as we learn from
our historical and political
archives, the Socialists and
Communists began to die out, since
they at last realized the utter
hopelessness of combating the balance
of power. The account, though, now
stood:

 2435   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 have flunked my course before and
are now taking it the second time, of
course know what is coming.

    "Now the hundred years which
ended with the year 2535 A.D. saw two
events -- one, very important and
vital to mankind, and the other, very
interesting. I shall explain.

    "During the age in which this
John Jones lived, there also lived 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 a 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 that the
old delta 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 alpha
rays and the gamma 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
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 re-
invest it. By scanning the following
notation, you will perceive the truth
of my statement:

 2535   600 years   $47,900,000

    "By the year 2635 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 two
to the Naperian base 'e.' At once,
special vibrating cars were
constructed which carried mankind to
all the 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 landrush that ensued,
thousands who were previously poor
became rich.

    "But, gentlemen, land which so
far had constituted one of the main
sources of wealth, was shortly to
become valuable for individual golf
courses 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
principle 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 Air 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:

 2635   700 years   $912,000,000

    "In truth, gentlemen, it now
constituted the largest private
fortune on the terrestrial globe. And
in that year 2635 A.D. there were
thirteen generations yet to come
before John Jones the fortieth would
arrive.

    "To continue. In the year 2735
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 on 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 2735. Piece by piece it was
chipped away and brought to the Earth
in Interplanetary freight cars. These
pieces were then propelled by
Zoodelite 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 daresay those moon-hunks
are going yet.

    "At the start of the removal of
the moon in 2735 A.D., the
accumulated wealth of John Jones the
fortieth stood:

 2735   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
early part of the Twenty-ninth
Century, or the year 2821, to be
precise, 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' Dollar, both at the
date when the moon was completely
removed, and also at the close of the
900th year after its deposit:

 2821   886 years   $219,000,000,000

 2835   900 years   $832,000,000,000

    "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 2920 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 1935, interest was to be
compounded annually at three per
cent. In the year 2920 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
$6,309,525,241,862.15.

    "But unfortunately, a simple
computation showed that if Mr.
J664M42721Male married Miss
T240M426MFemale, and was blessed by a
child by the year 2935, 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:

 2935  1000 years $6,810,000,000,000

"It simply showed, beyond all
possibility of argument, that by 2935
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 were 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 have
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 2961 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 Chromo-Visaphone.

    For a moment, the professor
stood, ruminating.

    "A wonderful man, that old
Socialist John Jones the first," he
said softly to himself, "a far-seeing
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 -- suppose that that fortieth
descendant had been born!"

               The End