money matters

My mind has been cluttered recently with exchange rates and transaction fees, as I'm stuck in a kind of financial limbo. I can't open a UK bank account until I'm officially enrolled in school (next week) or am officially in residence in my permanent address (next month). In the meantime, I'm faced with the odd situation of possessing money in one denomination and being obliged to spend it in another.

In addition to their divergent values on the world exchange, however, there's another difference between the dollar and the pound: who's on them.

I was struck the other day by the fact that the historical figures depicted on the 10 and 20-pound notes are two influential theorists: Charles Darwin and Adam Smith, respectively. Both native sons of Britain (though, apparently, Smith is the first Scot to be depicted on a banknote), but also rather polemical figures. I'm pretty sure that attempts to put comparable persons onto American notes would be met with vociferous protests from the extreme right and left. Over here, they hardly seem to raise much of a fuss.

[It's worth noting in passing that there's a new movie about Darwin opening in the UK on Sept. 25, a seemingly by-the-numbers biopic starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly -- residents of Brooklyn, I might add. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the film hasn't found an American distributor.]

Much of what a society values can be seen in whom it decides to put on its money. It's striking that all American notes depict political figures, mostly Presidents. Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, which seems fitting (and which finds its parallel in Britain's placement of Sir John Houblon, the first Governor of the Bank of England, on their 50-pound note). Benjamin Franklin, of course, never held elected office but is closely associated with the founding of the nation.

Looking at our currency, one might get the impression that only men in government have contributed to American history. Sure, Lincoln deserves to be there but what about Frederick Douglass, Harriett Beecher Stowe or Harriett Tubman? The British 5-pound note currently features a woman previously unknown to me named Elizabeth Fry, whom Wikipedia describes as a Quaker prison reformer. To my knowledge, the only social activist ever depicted on an American monetary unit was Susan B. Anthony (on a coin no one likes to use, the silver dollar!) and that was discontinued after two years.

In America, we tend to restrict the commemoration of non-governmental cultural figures to pictures on postage stamps, though in our Internet age almost none of us deal with stamps with any regularity.

What thinkers and activists ought to go onto US currency? Who are our Smiths, Darwins, and Frys?

Martin Luther King?

Milton Friedman?

Earl Warren?

Harvey Milk?

Jane Addams?

Who you pick says a lot about what you consider your country to be.