Robinson Crusoe's Money - David Ames Wells

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for ascertaining the comparative value or purchasing power of every other exchangeable commodity or service; and in precisely the same manner as the length or weight of any thing is ascertained, i.e., by comparing it with some other thing which the community have universally agreed to recognize as a standard of length or weight—as, for example, the rod of wood which we call a yard-stick, or a piece of metal which is termed a pound. “My loaves are each worth ten pieces of the intermediate commodity,” said Needum, the baker! “My coat,” rejoined Twist, the tailor, “is worth a thousand pieces!” The terms of fair exchange between the baker and the tailor would therefore have been one hundred loaves for one coat.

      The general name given to the commodities or articles which the people of different countries universally accept in exchange, as the equivalent for all other commodities or services, and as the measure of values, is money.

      The commodities or articles which have been selected by men at various times and places to serve as this universal equivalent, intermediate agent, or medium for facilitating exchanges, have been exceedingly various. Among the North American Indians, and the early settlers who came among them, wampum and beaver-skins were used as money; among the natives of West Africa, money consists of small shells called “cowries;” in Abyssinia, the common money of to-day is salt; in Chinese Tartary, it is cubes of pressed tea; and within a comparatively recent period small cakes of soap have been used as money on the west coast of Mexico. Among pastoral people of antiquity, cattle and sheep were so extensively used for money that our common English word pecuniary has its derivation from the old word pecus, signifying a flock. And while we read in Homer that the price of the armor of Glaucus was one hundred head of cattle, we also know that the Zulus of South Africa pay their debts to-day in cattle, and reckon their wealth by the same standard.

      Money, therefore, existed before statutes, and exists and is used to-day among nations who have no written or acknowledged code of laws.

      It is also of importance to a clear understanding of this subject to recognize at this point another fundamental fact, namely, that there is no evidence that any nation or people has ever adopted, in the first instance, any article or commodity to use as money which did not possess, by reason of some inherent or intrinsic desirable qualities, a natural purchasing power or value. And a little reflection will make it obvious that this must have been so from necessity. For in the absence of all law defining what money should be, and regulating exchanges, the adoption of any article to serve as money which represented little or no effort for its production or accumulation would enable the shrewd, the idle, or unscrupulous, easily, and without fear of punishment or restraint, to take from the rest of the community products which represented the expenditure of time and labor, without giving in return any equivalent. Thus, for example, if dried leaves, or pieces of paper with such marks as any might choose to stamp or scrawl upon them, had been invested with a universal purchasing power, the primary practical result of the use of such money would have been to enable somebody to obtain something for nothing, or to permit those who would not work or save, to rob those who did. The people on the island, being uneducated, never did any such foolish thing; but when they came to study history, they found out, to their great surprise, that the people of other countries had repeatedly used things worthless in themselves as money; and many years afterward a man who aspired to be a great teacher even came to the island from the United States, and endeavored to convince the people that it was a great defect to use any thing as money which had any intrinsic value as a commodity.2 The children of the first school he attempted to talk to soon made his position embarrassing by reading from their histories that the people of every country, especially the poor and ill-informed, who had ever attempted to facilitate their exchanges by using something as money which had no intrinsic value, had in every case been so swindled and robbed, as a consequence, that sooner or later they were always compelled, as a measure of simple self-protection, to abandon its use, and in its place adopt something as money which had a generally acknowledged and comparatively permanent inherent value or purchasing power as a commodity.

      The following were some of the narrations which the children found and read out of their histories:

      “In December, 1861, a poor soldier’s widow put into the savings-bank two hundred dollars in specie, and then removed with four young children to California. In July, 1864, when gold stood at two hundred and eighty, she sent for her money. In return, she received a gold draft for eighty-three, accrued interest at six per cent, included.”—Henry Bronson, Nature and Office of Money.

      “The morals of the people were corrupted (by the Continental irredeemable money) beyond any thing that could have been believed prior to the event. All ties of honor, blood, gratitude, humanity, and justice were dissolved. Old debts were paid when the paper money was worth no more than seventy for one. Brothers defrauded brothers, children parents, and parents children. Widows, orphans, and others were paid for money lent in specie with depreciated paper.”—Breck, Sketch of Continental Money.

      “The assignats gradually dwindled down to nothing, involving the whole land in ruin—excepting a few lucky speculators—and resulted eventually in national bankruptcy. When thousands of wretches, even before the final collapse of the assignats, were committing suicide to escape starvation, war was a blessing; and Napoleon was the instrument by means of which all Europe was made to feel the results of worthless money, either directly or by inoculation, from its maddened victims.”—Notes on the French Assignats, and their Influence.

      “He had to pay four hundred dollars for a hat; for a pair of boots the same. He wanted a good horse, but was asked a price equivalent to ten years’ pay.” “My six months’ earnings will scarce defray the most indispensable outlay of a single day. * * * For a bed, supper, and grog for myself, my three companions, and their servants, I was charged, on going off without a breakfast next day, the sum of eight hundred and fifty dollars.”—Life of General De Kalb.

      “In all, from first to last (1835 to 1841), the amount of notes, bills, drafts, bonds, etc., issued by the Treasury of the Republic of Texas, and serving to a greater or less extent as a ‘circulating medium,’ amounted to $13,318,145, or at the rate of more than two hundred and sixty dollars per head of the entire population. If paper issues serving as money could have made a people rich, the Texans ought to have been the richest people in the universe. In January, 1839, Texas treasury-notes were worth no more than forty cents on the dollar; in the spring of 1839, they were worth thirty-seven and a half cents; in 1841, from twelve to fifteen cents; and in 1842 it required, in the characteristic language of the times, ‘fifteen dollars in treasury-notes to buy three glasses of brandy-and-water without sugar.’ ‘By this time there was little circulating medium of any kind in Texas; but this was no great calamity, as the people had but little left to circulate.’ The evils the system did were immense, and such as for which, even were it so disposed, the Government could afford no compensation to the sufferers.”—Gouge’s Fiscal History of Texas.

      Again, one of the principal objects for which money was devised and brought into use was to serve as a measure, or standard, for estimating the comparative value of other things. But it seems hardly possible to conceive of a person desirous of using money for such purpose, selecting an article to measure values which in itself possesses no value, or costs no labor to produce, any more than he would select as a standard for measuring length something which had no length, or as a standard for measuring weight something which had no weight. The people of the island must have been unusually stupid if they did not from the outset, therefore, clearly see that nothing can be reliable and good money under all circumstances which does not of itself possess the full amount of the value which it professes on its face to possess.

      Chapter V.

      How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom

      But while any commodity possessed of acknowledged purchasing power or value may be used as money, the experience of the islanders and every other people must have soon taught them that some commodities are much better adapted to this purpose than others; or, rather, that the use of certain commodities as money, while they may answer the purpose, nevertheless entail very serious disadvantages. And the details of the manner in which this information

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“The precious metals have many qualities which fit them for use as coin money. Their defects are their weight, their intrinsic value as commodities.”—Social Science and National Economy, by R. E. Thompson, Philadelphia, 1875.

“The moment it is perceived that money is nothing but a token, it becomes evident that any token currently accepted in exchange of useful services and products of labor will perform the proper functions of money without regard to the material of which it is made; and that the less costly the material out of which money is made, the better for the community that uses it.”—Money, Currency, and Banking, by Charles Moran, New York, 1875, p. 42.