Читать книгу: «Robinson Crusoe's Money», страница 2

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 has been acquired by experience constitute one of the most interesting chapters in the world’s history. The experience of the islanders was somewhat as follows:

At the outset they agreed to use cowries—a pretty shell picked up on the beach, and which the women all desired to have and use as an ornament. These shells were not, however, plentiful; and, in fact, it was found that it required about as much time and labor for a man to collect a hundred of them as it did to grow a bushel of wheat. Consequently, wheat regularly exchanged for cowries (as money) at the rate of one hundred cowries for one bushel, while the farmer with two thousand cowries could readily buy a plow, which was considered equivalent in value to twenty bushels. By-and-by, some idle fellows that were in the habit of sailing made a long excursion, and, for the first time, visited a little island on the remote horizon. When they landed, they found, to their surprise, that instead of cowries being very scarce on the beach, they were very abundant. They winked at one another, and said little; but each man proceeded to gather all the cowries he could, and, returning to the main island, kept their discovery a profound secret.

The first thing of note that next happened among the Robinson Crusoe people was a great and unexpected revival in business. Money began to grow abundant. Societary circulation was never so active. Every thing that was offered for sale speedily found a purchaser, and, demand increasing, prices rapidly increased also. It was also noticed that a few persons who never did any regular work, but speculated and gambled all the morning, and took pleasant sailing excursions every afternoon, had, especially, plenty of money, which, as patriotic citizens, desirous of making trade lively, they were always most ready to part with for other commodities. The shop-keepers, the farmers, and the mechanics, all also finding that they had more money than usual, all also felt impelled to buy something, and prices took a fresh start upward, so that a bushel of wheat that could previously have been sold for one hundred cowries easily brought one hundred and fifty, and even two hundred. But, on the other hand, the farmer, instead of being able to buy, as before, a plow for two thousand cowries, now found that he had to pay double, or four thousand; or, in other words, the cowries had only about one-half the purchasing power they possessed before.

But for a time every body was jubilant. Was it not evident that the value of every man’s possessions, measured in cowry money, had greatly increased—and what could be more natural than that the shrewd adventurers who had been the authors of these golden days should be highly honored, invited to speak before cowry clubs in all parts of the island, and be even talked of for the chief offices, which still continued to be filled by Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday? The continually augmenting prices—measured in cowry money—of all commodities, or, what is the same thing, the continually diminishing purchasing power of the cowries, at last began to attract attention, and this in turn induced distrust; so that the price of a bushel of wheat, which had been at first one hundred cowries, and then two hundred, rose to three, four, and even five hundred cowries. Another remarkable circumstance noticed was, that, as prices increased, the wants of trade for cowry money also increased proportionably, which want the adventurers who had been the means of giving the island its increased volume of money took care to supply by bringing additional quantities of cowries as they were needed. It was also observed that, as distrust increased, there was also a remarkable increase in societary activity; for every body desired to change off his cowry money for something else.³ Persons who were in debt made haste to pay their debts, and every body was ready to lend cowry money to start all sorts of new enterprises. A company was organized, for example, with a capital of ten million cowries, to explore the wreck of the original ship which brought Robinson Crusoe to the island; and although nobody knew exactly where the wreck was, or what was supposed to remain in it, it was advocated as affording great opportunity for labor. Another project, for which a company with fifty million cowries capital was started, was to build a system of canals across the island, although the island had a width of only about ten miles, with a remarkably safe ocean navigation all around it.

Finally, the secret of the whole matter gradually leaked out. Other people besides the original three shrewd fellows found out where the supply of cowries came from, and made haste to visit the remote island, provide themselves with money, and put it in circulation. But the more money that was issued, the more was needed to supply the wants of trade, until at last it took a four-horse wagon-load of cowries to buy a bushel of wheat. Then the bubble burst. Stock-companies all failed. Trade became utterly stagnant. The man whom Robinson Crusoe had made secretary of the island treasury thought he could help matters by issuing a few more cowries, but it was no use. Some very wise persons were certain that every thing would be all right again if people would only have confidence; but as long as the people who worked and saved were uncertain what they were to receive for the products of their labor—something or nothing—confidence didn’t return. Every body felt poor and swindled. Every body who thought he had money in savings-banks woke up all at once to the realization that his money was nothing but a lot of old shells. Every body had his bags, his tills, and his money-boxes filled with shells, which he had taken in exchange for commodities which had cost him valuable time and labor. Strictly speaking, however, calamity did not overtake every body. There were some exceptions, namely the shrewd and idle fellows who had first found the cheap supply of cowries, and, taking advantage of the ignorance of the community, had added them to the before-existing circulation to serve as money. All these had taken very good care to keep the substantial valuable things—houses, lots, plows, grain, etc.—which they had received in exchange. They had, in fact, grown rich by robbing the rest of the community.⁴ The community, however, were too courteous to call them thieves, and in conversation they were usually referred to as shrewd financiers, and as men ahead of their time. The concluding act of this curious island experience was, that the formerly so highly prized money became depreciated to such an extent as to possess value only as a material for making lime. The people accordingly, by burning, made lime out of it, and then, in order to make things outwardly cheerful, used the lime as white-wash. But upon one point they were all unanimous, and that was, that the next commodity they might select to use as money should be something whose permanency of value did not depend on elements capable of being suddenly affected by accidental circumstances, or arbitrarily and easily changed by the devices of those who desired to get their living without working for it.

But this experience of the islanders in reference to the originating and using of money, although curious, has not been exceptional; for the records of history show that men almost everywhere, in going through the process of civilization, have had a greater or less measure of the same experience. One particularly noteworthy illustration of this is recorded in the “History of New York,” by Diedrich Knickerbocker, and in the manuscript records of the New York Historical Society. It was in the days of Dutch rule—1659—in New Amsterdam (afterward New York), when the common money in use was the so-called Indian money, or “wampum;” which consisted “of strings of beads wrought of clams, periwinkles, and other shell-fish. These had formed a simple currency among the savages, who were content to take them of the Dutch in exchange for peltries.”

William Kieft was at that time governor, and being desirous of increasing the wealth of New Amsterdam, and withal, as the historian relates, somewhat emulous of Solomon (who made gold and silver as plenty as stones in the streets of Jerusalem), he (the governor) determined to accomplish his desire, and at the same time rival Solomon by making this money of easy production the current coin of the province. “It is true, it had an intrinsic value among the Indians, who used it to ornament their robes and moccasins; but among the honest burghers it had no more intrinsic value” than bits of bone, rag, paper, or any other worthless material. “This consideration, however, had no weight with Governor Kieft. He began by paying all the servants of the company, and all the debts of the Government, in strings of wampum. He sent emissaries to sweep the shores of Long Island, which was the Ophir of this modern Solomon, and abounded in shell-fish. These were transported in loads to New Amsterdam, coined into Indian money, and launched into circulation.”

“And now for a time affairs went on swimmingly. Money became as plentiful as in the modern days of paper currency, and, to use a popular phrase, ‘a wonderful impulse was given to public prosperity.’”

Unfortunately for the success of Governor Kieft’s scheme, the Yankees on Connecticut River soon found that they could make wampum in any quantity, with little labor and cost, out of oyster-shells, and accordingly made haste to supply all the wampum that the wants of trade in New Amsterdam required; buying with it every thing that was offered, and paying the worthy Dutchmen their own price. Governor Kieft’s money, it is to be further noticed, had also in perfection that most essential attribute of all good money, “non-exportability.” Accordingly, when the Dutchmen wanted any tin pans or wooden bowls of Yankee manufacture, they had to pay for them in substantial guilders, or other sound metallic currency; wampum being no more acceptable to the Yankees in exchange than addled eggs, rancid butter, rusty pork, rotten potatoes, or any other non-exportable Dutch commodity.⁵

The result of all this was, that in a little time the Dutchmen and the Indians got all the wampum, and the Yankees all the beaver-skins, Dutch herrings, Dutch cheeses, and all the silver and gold of the province. Then, as might naturally have been expected, confidence became impaired. Trade also came to a stand-still, and, to quote from the old manuscript records, “the company is defrauded of her revenues, and the merchants disappointed in making returns with which they might wish to meet their engagements.” It is safe to conclude that, after this, the commodity made use of by the Dutchmen as money was something less liable to have its value impaired than wampum.

The early settlers in East Tennessee also came to a similar conclusion, after a somewhat similar experience. Raccoon-skins were in demand for various purposes, and consequently were valuable. They accordingly selected them for use as money. Opossum-skins, on the other hand, were not in demand, and therefore had little value. Those of the settlers who desired to discharge their obligations without giving a full equivalent paid their taxes in opossum-skins to which coons’ tails were attached. The counterfeits having once got into the treasury, could not be exported out of the treasury to meet the payments of the State, and the use of coon-skins as currency came to an end.

But to return to the island. Although the first experience of the islanders in selecting a commodity to be used as money had been particularly unfortunate, the necessity of having some agency to serve the purpose of money remained as great as before, and consequently a new commodity had to be selected. Various people proposed various things. Some proposed to use bananas, which were always desirable, and, when good and ripe, were always exchangeable at a very constant value; but their unfitness to be used as money was acknowledged as soon as it was pointed out that bananas decayed very quickly after they became most useful, and that therefore a man who had plenty of money to-day might have none tomorrow, and that through no fault of his own.⁶ Wheat, cattle, and pieces of stamped iron were also proposed, but all of these were found to be unsuitable in some essential particular. Thus, for example, it was objected to wheat, that, though it was almost always in demand, and represented a very constant amount of labor for its production, it was too bulky to carry about, and rarely had the same exact value one year as another; to cattle, that it was impossible to divide up an ox, cutting off the tail at one time and the ears at another, for the purpose of making change, without destroying the value of the animal as a whole; and that if cows in general were to be used as legal tender to pay debts, the very poorest cow would very probably be selected from the money-pen for such a purpose;⁷ while, if iron were adopted as money, and circulated at its current value, it might be necessary to move about a ton to pay a debt of twenty or thirty dollars.

A peculiar kind of beads, made of blue glass, had come into use with the women on the island as ornaments, and being greatly in demand, small in bulk, and of most durable material, they were thought to be peculiarly well fitted to serve the purpose of money. They were accordingly adopted, and for a time fairly answered the purpose. But all at once the women declared their continued use to be unfashionable; and all use and demand for the beads at once ceasing, the merchants and others who had accumulated a large stock of them, in exchange for other commodities, at the same moment found that what they had regarded as money had no longer any purchasing power or value, and in consequence experienced great losses. Thereupon the community concluded not to use blue glass beads any longer as money.⁸

How fast the people on the island, by reason of their varied experience, educated themselves up to a knowledge of what constitutes good money may be inferred from the following incident:

A portion of the inhabitants on the island were heathen, and, to defray the expense of efforts to civilize and Christianize them, it was the habit of certain good men to take advantage of the assembling of the people from time to time to solicit and receive contributions for such objects. It was observed, however, on such occasions that some persons, either through ignorance of what constitutes money, or by reason of great poverty, were in the habit of depositing commodities in the hat which were not money; and the practice having been brought to the attention of Robinson Crusoe (who generally presided at such meetings), he is reported to have administered rebuke and instruction in the following impressive manner:

“Before proceeding to take up our regular contribution for the heathen,” he said, “I would suggest to the congregation—and more especially to those who sit in the gallery—that the practice of putting into the hat commodities which are not money, more especially buttons, shows a degree of ignorance respecting the uses of money on the part of some in this community which I had not supposed possible, after all our recent and varied experience on this subject. But if, through ignorance or impecuniosity, any should feel obliged to continue to contribute buttons in the place of money, I would request that they do not stamp down or break off the eyes; inasmuch, as while by so doing they utterly destroy the utility of these commodities as buttons, and do not increase their desirability as money, they also utterly fail to deceive the heathen; who, although ignorant of the Gospel, and not using buttons for any purpose, are nevertheless, as a general thing, good judges of currency.”

Chapter VI.
Gold, and How they Came to Use It

Finally, time and circumstances helped the islanders to a solution of their difficulties. A man, walking in a ravine one day, picked up a small bright mass of shining metal. Although it had evidently lain in the sand, been washed by the water, exposed to the atmosphere, and rubbed against the rocks, nobody knows how long, it had a remarkable brightness and color; and the more it was rubbed, the brighter and more attractive it became. This little mass of metal, which afterward came to be designated as gold, the man carried home to his wife, who in turn was so much pleased with it that she hung it by a string about her neck as an ornament. Its attractiveness of course excited the desire of every other woman to have the same, and a further search in the ravine resulted in the discovery of other nuggets. Closer examination of the new metal also showed that it possessed many other remarkable qualities besides brightness. It was found it could easily be melted and cast, and also be readily molded without heat by hammering and pressing; and that when so cast, molded, and pressed, it persistently retained the shape and impression that were given it. Further, that it could be drawn into the finest of wire, hammered into the thinnest of plates and leaves, and be bent and twisted to almost any extent without breaking; that an admixture with it of the slightest impurity or alloy so immediately changed its color, that color became to a very high degree a test of its purity;⁹ that fire, water, air, and almost all the agencies destructive to other things, had comparatively little or no effect upon it; that with the exception of size and weight, every piece, no matter how small, possessed all the attributes of every other larger piece; and that when any large piece was divided into a great number of smaller pieces, these last, in turn, could be reunited without loss or difficulty again into one whole. Of course, the discovery of all these remarkable qualities united in one substance not only greatly increased its utility, but at the same time greatly increased the desire of every body to have it. In place of being worn in a rough state as an ornament, it was converted into rings, bracelets, chains, pins, etc. It was found to be almost indispensable for a great number of mechanical and chemical purposes; and, finally, the charm for its possession and desire for its use proved so overpowering that to many it actually became almost an object of worship.

If a man was a Pagan, he felt that in no way could he so honor and symbolize the god he worshiped as to fashion in gold the image of that which he imagined; if he was a Christian, he chose gold for the fabrication of his symbolic vessels and ornaments, as, of all material things, the one which was most typical of purity, beauty, durability, and worth. If a great government or a people desired to commemorate the deeds of a hero or statesman, it impressed their effigies in medals of gold; if a maxim was enunciated which by general consent embodied the best rules of life, it was called golden; if a law or precept was thought worthy of being kept in ever-present remembrance before the people, it was emblazoned in letters of gold; while for speech, prophecy, or poetry, this same metal has ever been a never-failing source for the finest of comparisons and the most attractive of figurative illustrations. In short, from the time of its first discovery, among all nations, in all countries, with the ignorant and the learned, the savage and the civilized, the rich and the poor, the humble and the powerful, gold has always been, of all material things, the one which most men have desired most; the one for which, under most circumstances, they have been willing to exchange all other material possessions, and for the sake of acquiring which, even part with immaterial things of greater value—honor, creed, morality, health, and even life itself.

Gold so becoming an object of universal desire to the people on the island, and made exchangeable for all other things, it soon acquired spontaneously a universal purchasing power, and from that moment became Money.

This purchasing power was at first by no means fixed or constant. So long as there was but a small quantity of gold, its purchasing power was large. As the quantity extracted from the rocks or washed from the sands became greater, and the wants of the people became more and more satisfied, its purchasing power or value decreased; and if the supply had continued, and the demand had been limited to the wants of the island exclusively, its value in time would have undoubtedly been no greater than copper or iron, and possibly not so great. But, very curiously, an abundant supply did not continue. That which was obtained first and with little labor proved to be the result of the decay and washing of the rocks through long ages; and when the readily accessible or surface deposits became exhausted, as was soon the case, the conditions determining the supply of gold became altogether different. On the one hand, there was no lack of gold. Instead of being a very scarce metal, as was for a time supposed, it was found to be so widely disseminated that the chemists and metallurgists readily detected traces of gold in almost every extensive bed of clay and sand they examined.¹⁰

But, on the other hand, experience also proved that to collect any very considerable quantity of the metal required the expenditure not only of a vast amount of most disagreeable and exhausting labor, but also of a great quantity of other commodities. So that the people who, at the outset, abandoned their various occupations of raising wheat, making coats, building boats, baking bread, and constructing stone walls and chimneys, and betook themselves to digging gold, soon learned that, as a general rule, the results of a day’s labor thus employed purchased no more of useful or desirable commodities—meat, drink, clothes, etc.—than the results of a similar amount of labor exerted in the most ordinary occupations; and not a few even were ready to assert, as the result of their individual experience, that a man could do better for himself in the way of earning a living by following any and every other occupation rather than that of seeking for gold.¹¹ Accordingly, after trying it for a little while, the most skilled laborers left the gold regions and went back to their old occupations; and these, in turn, were followed by the unskilled laborers in such numbers, that had it not been for the encouragement growing out of the hope of suddenly enriching themselves through the chance discovery of a great nugget (as sometimes happened), the mines would have been entirely deserted. As it was, the supply of gold greatly fell off, and, the demand for it remaining about the same, the purchasing power of the stock on hand for other commodities gradually increased, until it came about that the result of an average day’s labor in digging gold was found to buy more than the result of an average day’s labor in other occupations. But as soon as this was observed, an additional supply of labor went back to gold-mining, and continued to follow it, until an equalization of results from effort in gold-digging and effort in other corresponding employments was again established, as before related. And this interchange of employments and equalization of results from labor went on, year by year, until at last the people, as it were by instinct, found out that a given quantity of gold represented more permanently a given amount of a certain grade or kind of human labor or effort than any other one substance. And the moment this fact became apparent, the people on the island for the first time also clearly perceived that gold, in addition to the universal exchanging quality or purchasing power which it had before naturally acquired, from the circumstance that every body from the time of its first discovery wanted it, had further acquired two other attributes, which fitted it, above all things else, to serve as money; namely, and first, that it had become a measure or standard of value, by which, as by a yard-stick, the comparative value of all other commodities might be measured or estimated; and, second, that its value or purchasing power was so constant and continuously inherent in itself, even under circumstances when the value of most other commodities would be destroyed, that the greatest security or guarantee which any person owning gold could possibly have of its remaining valuable to him for any length of time was, that the owner should simply keep possession of it.

By no portion of people on the island was this last attribute regarded so much in the light of a blessing as by the poor old men and women. As a general rule, they earned but little more than sufficed to support them, and they were therefore always naturally very anxious lest what little they saved should be impaired in value or made worthless by keeping, before the time when they might especially need it to pay for doctors and medicine, or insure them a decent burial. The cowry money, which had before represented their hard toil and personal deprivation, had turned out, on keeping, to be only worthless shells; the bead money had become valueless when it became unfashionable; the cattle money had to be fed every day to keep it from experiencing a heavy discount, and penned up every night to prevent it from walking off; the wheat money was always liable to be injured by damp or devoured by vermin; while twenty pounds of pig-iron had proved too heavy for their old limbs to carry to the store every time they wanted to purchase a little cloth or tobacco. But here was something at last which completely satisfied the necessities of their situation, and enabled them to feel certain that, whether they buried it in the ground, where it was always damp and moldy; or put it in the chimney, where it was always hot and smoky; or lived at one end of the island among the heathen, or at the other end among the Christians, would always, year in and year out, buy about the same average quantity of all sorts of things; and which, when offered in payment for services or commodities, to the doctor, lawyer, merchant, druggist, undertaker, mason, or tailor; to the Yankee, Irish, Dutch, Turk, or Hindoo; to the governor of Ohio, or a senator from Indiana, did not require any of them to look in a book, examine a law, read the Bible, or hunt up the resolutions of the last Congress or political convention, to tell how much it was worth, or whether it was safe to take and keep it.

There was a very wise man on the island who objected to the use of gold as money, for the reason that he felt afraid that the poor old women who wanted to feel certain of having always something of reliable value in their possession would fill their old stockings with it and hoard it.¹² But he was soon shut up by some one asking him, why, if the old women wanted to keep something by them perfectly secure against a rainy day, and slept better nights because they knew they had it, they shouldn’t be allowed that privilege? and if there could be any possible reason why any one should object to the old women hoarding gold, except that he wanted to cheat and wrong the poor by compelling them to keep their hard-earned savings in something whose value was not certain, and which might have no value whatever when it came time to pay the doctor or the undertaker?

When the people on the island first began to use gold as money, they carried it around with them in the form in which it was first found; the fine dust or scales inclosed in quills, and the nuggets in bags; or they melted and hammered it into large lumps and bars;¹³ and, as the purchasing power of the gold was always proportioned to its weight and purity, every body carried round with him small scales and tests with which he proved the gold before making exchanges with it (the same as is customary at the present day in China). But this method involved great inconveniences; and although the statement of a person of recognized honesty that he had proved the value of the gold he offered in payment was generally accepted, it was nevertheless recognized that there was no more unfairness or discourtesy in the claim of the grocer to test the quality of the money of his customer by scales and acids, than there was in the claim of the customer to test, by tasting, the salt and sugar of the grocer. As might be inferred, therefore, it often required a good deal of time to complete the most ordinary exchanges, and people everywhere complained about it and wrote letters to the newspapers. Merchants who were very cautious and particular, irritated their customers, and got the reputation of being very exacting and distrustful; while merchants who had but little capital and wanted to get business, advertised they would take gold on the simple word of their customers. But it was observed of the last, that, owing to being constantly cheated, they all, sooner or later, failed. At last the difficulty was remedied by a series of happy circumstances.

Robinson Crusoe had, some years before this, died, at a good old age, as had also Will Atkins, and all the sailors who had come with him to the island from other countries; so that there were none now on the island who had ever known any thing about or ever seen any coined money. In making some public improvements, however, a party of workmen one day broke into the old cave in which Crusoe had first lived when he escaped from the shipwreck, and there, in the dirt beneath the floor, were discovered the three great bags of money which Crusoe had found in the chest, and in his disgust had buried and utterly forgotten. Every body at once recognized the metal to be gold, and was perfectly willing to exchange other commodities for it with the finders, the same as he was willing to do for any other gold. But why it should be in the form of flat round disks, and stamped with inscriptions and images, was something that puzzled every body; and the Antiquarian and Philosophical Society called a special meeting to discuss the subject. Some, looking to only one side of the pieces, thought they were medals struck to commemorate some distinguished man, or a woman, whose name often appeared to be “Liberty.” Others, who looked only at the other side, thought they were intended to signalize a great contest between the lion and the unicorn, or to make the people familiar with the peculiarities of some unnatural bird or beast, which, as it was not like any thing either in the heavens, or on the earth, or in the waters under the earth, it might not be sinful to worship.