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Chapter X.
After the War

At last the war ended. The cannibals were utterly repulsed; and the islanders no longer laid awake nights for fear of being roasted and eaten. A vast amount of every thing useful had, however, been necessarily destroyed; and it would seem as if this admitted fact would have made the people of the island feel poor. But, very curiously, it did not. The promises to pay for the commodities destroyed had all been preserved. They were regarded by almost every body as money; and if money, then, of course, as every body knew, they were wealth, and wealth so great and superabundant that the one thing especially necessary to do was to devise plans for using it. Every body, therefore, devised plans; those who had no money more especially devising plans for those who had. All sorts of schemes were accordingly entered upon; railroads to carry people to the isothermals and every other place where they didn’t want to go; and oil-wells on Cheat and Al(l)gon(e)quin rivers, and patented inventions for making substitutes for tea and coffee, being especially recommended as permanent investments. John Law, Lemuel Gulliver, Baron Munchausen, Sir John Mandeville, Juan Ferdinand Mendez-Pinto, and Sindbad the Sailor, all came to town, and were chronicled in the newspapers as having registered at the principal hotels.

Great and commendable industry was also displayed in replacing the things destroyed by the war, so that, for a time, the societary circulation became more brisk than ever; while some who had up to this time regarded war as a misfortune and national calamity, now felt that they had made a mistake; and others who had known all the time that war was a blessing, seriously thought of proposing another war as a means of increasing national prosperity.¹⁹ The large and constant investment of the results of labor and economy in enterprises which never could by any possibility give back any adequate return, was, as every body saw, the next best thing to war; and on the advice of the most Christian newspapers, very many of the best people made haste to make such use of their little savings; although, as agriculturists, they were perfectly well aware that to plant seed wheat or corn in soils where it would not come up, or, coming up, bear no fruit, was always very bad business, and did not encourage the sower to hire much additional labor the next year.

Another idea which about this time had become very popular on the island was, that while it was a very desirable thing to sell as much as possible of the products of the island to people in other countries, it was not desirable to buy any thing from foreigners in return, and that it was wise to put all possible obstructions in the way of any ill-informed persons who desired to make such exchanges. But as no one can long continue to buy unless he proportionally sells, or sell unless he proportionally buys, the foreign commerce of the island soon came to a stand-still; and what also notably helped to this result was, that the necessity of insuring all exchanges made through the medium of the unstable currency of the island caused all the island products to cost from five to ten or fifteen per cent. more than they otherwise would, and more than they would cost the foreigners to buy elsewhere.²⁰ But as every industrious community (especially if it calls in the aid of the forces of nature through machinery) produces more than it consumes; and as the islanders were both industrious and ingenious, it oddly enough happened that the community became sorely troubled by an accumulation of useful things, which the manufacturers would not part with, because they were unwilling to sell at a loss, and which the foreigners would not buy because they could buy cheaper elsewhere, and pay in their own products for what they bought. Then the manufacturers stopped producing, and next the laborers, by lack of employment, being unable to buy a full share of the existing abundance, in turn diminished their consumption; so that for a time it seemed as though the island would get into the condition of those unfortunate people who die of their own fatness.

In this way the times gradually “got out of joint.” Gradually the people on the island came to realize that much which they had considered as wealth was not wealth, and that many influences, before little regarded, were powerfully acting to make and keep them poor. All were satisfied that the currency which they were using was one prime cause of their difficulties, but in precisely what manner the currency exerted an influence few agreed. All were of one mind, that they ought to talk about it continually; and they accordingly did so, those who knew the least talking the most. Some thought that the honest thing to do, and because honest the best, was for the Government of the island to redeem its promises to pay on demand as rapidly as possible; that where they had borrowed a canoe of one man, cloth of another, spears of a third, or money of a fourth, they should return them, and not keep promising and never doing. But even these did not agree as to the manner of thus paying. Some thought it was best to return the canoes, the iron, the cloth, and the money from day to day as the Government gradually acquired them. Others thought that a better way would be to accumulate each separate thing in a separate warehouse, and then when the warehouses had, after some years, become full, open the doors, and return every man what had been borrowed of him all at once. But, as before pointed out, the Government never had, or could have, any canoes, cloth, iron, or money, except such as it obtained from the people; and, therefore, payment on the part of the Government was really the same thing as payment on the part of the people. But payment of debts is something to which many people are constitutionally opposed; and this scheme accordingly found many opponents, who alleged that, if it were carried out, it would deprive them of money, and consequently of instrumentalities for making their exchanges; while the real trouble with many of this class of people was, that they hadn’t any thing useful, the products of their own industry, to exchange, and therefore could get no money, unless they went to work, or, what was preferable, acquired it from somebody without consideration.

Besides the persons referred to, who either openly or by their indecision opposed fiscal reform, there were various other classes of obstructives. There were those, for example, who, during the war, were always friends of peace, dressed in broad-brimmed hats and drab coats, and were at any time ready to compromise with the cannibals, on condition that the latter should be satisfied with roasting and eating only the old men, the babies, and an occasional mother-in-law. All such, as a part of their peace policy, opposed the original issue and circulation of the bluebacks as something arbitrary, illegal, and unnecessary. When, however, the cannibals were driven away, these “friends of peace in time of war” at once changed their Quaker garb; became “friends of war in time of peace;” declared earnestly for the enlarged issue and continued use of the bluebacks, and, as a pretext for so doing, were willing, if necessary, to have another war, or, at least, an annual scare. During the war, these friends of peace were called “copper-heads;” and after the war, their copper-headism, although disguised, was substantially the same thing. For it was apparent that opposition to the issue of the bluebacks, as manifested by the advocates of peace during the war, and opposition to their payment and withdrawal after the war, were only different manifestations of hostility to the Government and to the war itself: inasmuch as failure on the part of the Government to observe its promises, made under such circumstances of extreme peril, would manifestly put it in bad repute, and prevent it from ever resorting to similar measures in like emergencies.²¹ The really intelligent and patriotic men of the island at once saw through this duplicity and repudiation, advocated under pretense of extreme solicitude for the wants of trade. They remembered the old couplet:

 
“When the devil was sick, the devil a monk would be;
When the devil got well, the devil a monk was he;” ²²
 

and thereafter designated the opponents of paying the bluebacks, as inflated, or elongated, copper-heads, by which name they were ever after known in history.

There were also many well-meaning citizens, who sincerely desired to have the balloon of inflation come down, but strenuously objected to have this result effected by any diminution of the volume of gas contained in it. All the first-cousins of the man who waited for the river to run by before crossing were certain the balloon would come down, if people would only be patient, keep a sharp lookout, and wait. But to this it was objected, that if people were obliged to consume a large part of their time in watching the balloon, to avoid having their heads smashed by its swayings and fluctuations, there would ultimately be a scarcity of victuals and drink; and that, rendered desperate with watching, and want of employment, food, and clothing, those interested would finally insist on pulling open the valves, and letting the whole volume of gas escape at once. Some proposed to imitate the example of “Peter the Headstrong” in fighting the Yankees, and bring down the balloon by proclamation; while others professed to have great faith in family prayer. Eminent patriotic constitutional lawyers maintained that the military necessity that authorized and created the bluebacks must necessarily limit their duration solely to the period of their military necessity; and that their continued re-issue and use after the repulse of the cannibals was but a prolongation of the war—not against the enemy, but against their own people. The astute elongated copper-head lawyers held, on the other hand, that an instrument of military necessity, once created, remains such an instrumentality for continued use for all time; and, therefore, that a bullet or shell, once lawfully employed for effecting destruction in time of war, could legitimately be reissued or reshot in time of peace, without matter as to whom it might hit or what property it might destroy; and that, in fact, to go on reloading and refiring these instruments, and thereby killing and destroying, were not crimes, but high acts of patriotism. This theory, however, alarmed some timid people, who said that one shell or one bullet thus re-used indefinitely might destroy all the property, or kill all the people on the island; and they rather regretted, in view of such a construction, that they did not at once succumb to the cannibals, whose appetites, in time, might have become cloyed, or whose diet might have been changed through indigestion or moral suasion.

In the period of doubt and perplexity which thus came to the community, those fond of precedents carefully searched the old chronicles and records of other nations for lessons of experience; and, among various things which profited them greatly, they found, among the chronicles of the learned Spanish historian, Fray Antonio Agapida, the following account of what the veteran soldier, Don Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, Count de Tendilla, did, when, besieged by the Moors in the town of Alhama, he had also serious financial difficulties to contend with:

“It happened,” says Agapida, “that this Catholic cavalier, at one time, was destitute of gold and silver wherewith to pay the wages of his troops; and the soldiers murmured greatly, seeing that they had not the means of purchasing necessities from the people of the town. In this dilemma, what does this most sagacious commander? He takes me a number of little morsels of paper, on the which he inscribes various sums, large and small, according to the nature of the case, and signs me them with his own hand and name. These did he give to the soldiery, in earnest of their pay. ‘How!’ you will say, ‘are soldiers to be paid with scraps of paper?’ ‘Even so,’ I answer, ‘and well paid, too, as I will presently make manifest; for the good count issued a proclamation ordering the inhabitants of Alhama to take these morsels of paper for the full amount thereon inscribed, promising to redeem them at a future time with silver and gold, and threatening severe punishment to all who should refuse. The people, having full confidence in his word, and trusting that he would be as willing to perform the one promise as he certainly was able to perform the other, took these curious morsels of paper without hesitation or demur. Thus, by a subtile and most miraculous kind of alchemy, did this Catholic cavalier turn worthless paper into precious gold, and make his late impoverished garrison abound in money!’

“It is but just to add,” continues the historian, “that the Count de Tendilla redeemed his promises, like a loyal knight; and this miracle, as it appeared in the eyes of Agapida, is the first instance on record of paper money.”²³

It may be also remarked that the island antiquarians did not find any chronicle of any other soldier who imitated Count de Tendilla in issuing “little morsels of paper” to serve as money, and subsequently did not imitate him in promptly redeeming his promises, who found it easy to obtain again the confidence of the soldiers or the people when he again got into similar difficulties.²⁴

Chapter XI.
The New Millennium

At last there arose a sect of philosophers (calling themselves Friends of Humanity) who felt confident of settling all difficulties, and who also aspired to the government of the island.

Their chief had the reputation of being an ogre. He had served in the war against the cannibals, looked exceedingly fierce, and therefore was accounted brave; he talked loud and with great assurance, and therefore he was accounted wise; he had acquired great riches without ever doing any thing useful, and therefore he was accounted skilled in business.

His principal associates and counselors were two. The first was a great orator, who had spent most of his life as a missionary among an uneducated people who never had any property, and, of course, made no exchanges; and in this most excellent and practical school had learned all that could be acquired on this complicated subject. The second was a great athlete, who had performed for many years in the national circus, and had acquired great reputation by carrying weighty packages on both shoulders, labeled “domestic industry,” but which in reality contained only pig-iron. About these two “every one that was in distress, every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented gathered themselves,” so that they soon had a large body of disciples.

The first thing they did was to abuse poor old Robinson Crusoe, because he had advised his people, in his life-time, to make their money of gold (which can be only produced by labor, and not by hocus-pocus); and their currency of something that represented gold, and this, too, when he must have known that gold “was the machinery and relic of old despotisms;”²⁵ and they made no account whatever of the fact that he was the father of his country and lived in a cave. Next they declared that all the opinions heretofore accepted on this subject by the rest of mankind were fallacious; that nature had done its best to make the island an isolated community; that legislation had pretty effectually supplemented whatever in this respect nature had left deficient; and, therefore, that the wants of the island, in respect to money, currency, and every thing else, were so exceptional and peculiar that the accumulated experience of all the rest of the world could not be to them either applicable or instructive. All agreed that the pernicious theory taught by Robinson Crusoe, Friday, and other men of by-gone days and other countries—that money, to be good, ought to be a universally desirable commodity, and the equivalent of that for which it is exchanged—was the real source of all financial trouble; for was it not clear, that, if such were the case, those only could ever have money who, like the bloated wheat-holders, pig-holders, cattle-holders, house-holders, or bond-holders, had through labor previously come into possession of some desirable things, which they could give in exchange as an equivalent for money? while the true end of all financial reform, and the key to the terrible problem of poverty, was obviously to devise and bring into use that kind of money which those who had no wheat, pigs, cattle, houses, bonds, or other commodities, and were not able or disposed to acquire any through an exchange of their services, could have without difficulty, and in abundance. “We mean, therefore,” said the orator-philosopher, speaking for himself and his colleague Friends of Humanity, “to have more democracy and less aristocracy in the money market; more money in every body’s reach, and less for the petted few.”²⁶ In short, the patient having become very sick and attenuated by reason of the low (fiscal) diet upon which he had been fed, the doctors now proposed to resuscitate him by administering a still thinner gruel.

All also agreed that the word “money” was a bad name, and that the public would obtain a much clearer idea of the great problems at issue if more intelligible and scientific terms embodying definitions were used. One philosopher accordingly proposed that, as they intended to sprout it everywhere, they should go back to the Biblical designation, and call it the “root,” at the same time remarking that “the Lord showed what he thought of money by the kind of people he gave it to.” Another proposed to call it “the instrument of association” (Carey); a third, the “sign of transmission, of which the material shall be of native growth” (John Law, 1705); a fourth, “a sense of value as compared with commodities” (“British Tracts on Money,” 1795–1810); a fifth, “a standard neither gold nor silver, but something set up in the imagination to be regulated by public opinion” (ibid.).

As to what money, under the reform system, was, or should be, was also a question in respect to which there was not at first an entire agreement. One idea which found some favor, was, that money ought to be only a token, representative of services rendered at some indefinite time or place (possibly forgotten or disputed by its recipient), and “for which the holder has not received the equivalent to which he is inherently entitled under the system of division of labor.”²⁷ The best money, therefore, according to the philosophers of this idea, was an evidence that some one person owed some other person; and, consequently, the more debt, the more money; and the more money, the more wealth, unless it is to be supposed (as is not reasonable) that this sort of money was not to have the first attribute of all other money—namely, purchasing power.

Moreover, although the philosophers did not exactly say so, the inference was also legitimate, that in a community using merely “token” or “remembrance” money, the surest way to get rich would be to get in debt, and the best way of carrying on an enlightened system of trade and commerce, to exchange commodities, the results of time and labor, for evidences of debt without interest. It is needless to say that these teachings and inferences tended to greatly strengthen the people on the island in the opinion they before entertained, that the currency they already had—namely, evidences of destruction—was the “best currency the world ever saw.”

The three leaders among the philosophers were not, however, men who were going to be contented with any half-way measures. Had they not put their hands to the plow of reform? and were they, after so doing, to allow the plow to stick fast in the furrow? They accordingly appealed first to authority, and then to untutored reason.

The following are some of the authorities to which great weight was given:

“Commerce and population, which are the riches and power of the state, depend on the quantity and management of money.”—John Law, Memoir to the Duke of Orleans, 1705.

“Does, or does not, our duty to ourselves and the world at large demand that we maintain permanently a non-exportable circulation? Such is the question which now agitates the nation, and must at no distant day absorb all others. The affirmative of this question is also in perfect harmony with the practice and experience of leading nations, and in harmony with the teachings of sound economic science.”—Letter of Henry C. Carey to Congressman Moses W. Field, of Detroit, September, 1875. Consult also Governor William Kieft, “On the Use of Wampum Money in New Amsterdam” (large folio, scarce and rare), 1659.

“Long familiarity with the practice of giving security for loans, and of paying them back at a fixed date, has blinded us to the national advantages of loans without security and payable at any date.”—Karl Marx, Secrétaire, Organisation de l’Internationale.

But the thing which the philosophers relied on more than any thing else to sustain their views before the people was a judicial decision recently made in a neighboring country, by its highest court, before whom the question as to what constituted money was officially brought for determination. This decision, expressed in the very peculiar language of the country, was as follows: “What we do assert is, that Congress has power to enact that the Government promises to pay money shall be, for the time being, equivalent in value to the representative of value determined by the coinage acts, or to multiples thereof.” All of which, translated into the language of the island, meant that Government has the power to make a promise to pay, containing an acknowledgment in itself that the promise has not been paid, a full satisfaction that the promise has been paid. That this decision, furthermore, covered no new points of law, was indirectly conceded by the learned judges, inasmuch as, in giving their opinions, they cited, as precedents worthy of being ever remembered, the decisions of that eminent old-time jurist, Cade (Jack), who ordained that “seven half-penny loaves should be sold for a penny;” and that “the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops.” The same court also strengthened its position by saying that “it is hardly correct to speak of a standard of value. The Constitution does not speak of it. Value is an ideal thing. The coinage acts fix its unit as a dollar; but the gold and silver thing we call a dollar is in no sense the standard of a dollar. It is a representative of it. There might never have been a piece of money of the denomination of a dollar.”²⁸

[Note.—This last remark of the learned court embodied a great discovery; for how can there be a representative without something to represent? In the case of Peter Schlemihl, there was a man without a shadow; but here we have a shadow without any substance to make it. A gold dollar is not a specific and mechanically formed coin; but 25.8 grains of standard gold is a dollar. Did the court mean that these grains of gold may never have existed, and yet have representatives?—Author.]

The moment this decision was received, all the philosophers got down their dictionaries, and searched for the meaning of the word “ideal.” As was anticipated, its definition was found to be “visionary;” “existing in fancy or imagination only” (Webster); and from this time forth there was no longer any doubt in the minds of the reformers of the truth and strength of the position they occupied. For, to descend to reasoning, were not two intricate questions definitely settled by the highest of human tribunals? 1st. That the representative of a thing may be (and if those in authority say so, shall be) equivalent to the thing itself. 2d. That value is an ideal thing, and therefore imagination, which creates all ideal things, can create value.

It followed, of course, that to have and enjoy any thing and every thing, it is only necessary to create and use its symbol or representative; and to pay for value received, it is only necessary to imagine a corresponding and equivalent value, and pass it over in exchange and settlement. On these conclusions of law and reason, then, it was decided by the three leaders of the philosophers and their friends, who had control of the Government, that the future money of the state should be based. The former inscription on the currency in use, “promise to pay,” they were clear, was entirely unnecessary; for why promise money when the store on hand of money was to be made practically unlimited, or, at least, always equal to the wants of every body who desired to have it, whether he traded or not? Mathematical calculations were also made by a scientist, which proved that the amount of labor which would be actually saved to the community, and made available for other purposes, by using something as money which cost little or no labor to produce, in place of gold or commodities which represented much labor, would be so great as to require the immediate enactment of a law prohibiting any one from working over six hours per day, in order to guard against the evil of too great abundance. The same scientist had previously been so carried away by his demonstrations of the utility of a new stove which saved half the fuel, that he had recommended the purchase of two stoves in order to save the whole.

With few exceptions, to be hereafter noted, the whole population of the island were jubilant, and proceeded as rapidly as circumstances would permit to adjust all their commercial transactions to the new basis. But joy at the prospect of the coming millennium did not extinguish feelings of gratitude in the hearts of the people, and they resolved to send ample testimonials to all, in foreign lands, to whom they had been indebted for wisdom.

To each of the judges who had so intelligently defined value they accordingly voted an ideal castle and estate, possession of the same conferring nobility upon their owner, with the title of “Baron Ideality,” to which, by special patent, the recipient was authorized to use (if he pleased) the prefix of “damn.”

To the most notable advocate, in foreign lands, of the idea of non-exportable money a gift of one million of “instruments of association,” represented by ideal currency, was voted. But as this currency, both by law and the fitness of things, could not be exported from the island, it became impossible to pay this gift, and in its place a letter was written explaining the circumstances, and requesting that the resolution to pay might be accepted as a “sign of transmission.”

To the eminent financier who defined money, “as a sense of value in reference to currency as compared with commodities,” there was sent a plaster image of the “What Is It;” while to his colleague, who had given the opinion that “the less costly the material out of which money was made, the better for the community which uses it,” was sent a large box, containing contributions of the most worthless things every body could think of, with a polite note requesting the recipient to make his choice out of the collection of what seemed to him best adapted as a token, and forward a detailed report of his experience in attempting to use it as a representative of unrequited service.

Pending the slow preparations of the Government of the island to provide the requisite laws for the issue and use of the new money, various enlightened individuals attempted to anticipate official legislative action by putting into practical operation, on their own account, the principles involved in the new fiscal system. The first of these who thus acted was a secretary for the interior part of the island, whose chief business was to supply the heathen—for whom, it will be remembered, Robinson Crusoe took up contributions—with beef. There had been a suspicion for some time past hanging over this official that the heathen did not get all the beef that they were entitled to; but the suspicion probably had no further foundation than the inability of the heathen to make the sense of completion harmonize with the sign of transmission. To satisfy the heathen, and at the same time effectually clear up his character, the official in question now hastened to have prepared a large number of pictures of fine, fat cattle, which he dispatched by a Quaker to the heathen, with a request that they would kill and eat, and be satisfied, adding in a postscript that they would do well to begin to learn economy by saving the skins. As the Quaker never came back, it was deemed reasonably certain that, at least, the first part of the request had been complied with.

The managers of the Island Provident Society also promptly determined to develop and apply the ideal system in their sphere of usefulness to the full extent that circumstances permitted. Thus a large part of the business of this old and respected society was the distribution of clothing to the destitute; and, as is always the case when times are hard, the extent of the demands made upon it for aid tended to exceed the means of supply contributed by the charitable. The managers, however, knew that it never would answer in using the ideal system to subserve the work of charity, to put the locally needy on the same footing as the heathen, and in answer to appeals for raiment distribute to them elaborate pictures of fine clothing, cut from the fashion-plates; for there was this essential difference in the situations, that the needy were at their doors, while the heathen were a great way off. They, therefore, hit upon this happy mean: they employed a competent artist, with a full supply of paints and brushes, and when any destitute person applied for clothing, they painted upon his person every thing he desired in way of clothing of the finest and most fashionable patterns, from top-boots to collars, and from blue swallow-tailed coats to embroidered neck-ties, with jewelry and fancy buttons to match. Of course, the first man who appeared in public thus arrayed created a profound sensation. But the idea was so novel, and had obviously so many advantages over the old way of clothing one’s self, that the supremacy of the ideal over the real was at once greatly strengthened. For example—and here was one of the greatest merits of the new system—it not only symbolized, but practically applied, the views of the most advanced financial philosophers; favored (as the orator-philosopher wished) “more democracy and less aristocracy in the clothes market;” and encouraged the use of the least costly material out of which the community could make clothes; while the painted cotton, silk, wool, and leather could be made to look so exactly like the real articles, that it was only when the attempt was made to exchange the representative for the real that the difference was clearly discernible. Furthermore, every garment devised in accordance with the new system was, in all cases, a perfect fit. The plague of buttons was annihilated. Every man could save time enough in dressing and undressing to enrich himself, if he only employed his economized moments usefully. Every man might, without embarrassment, sleep in his clothes; and if he desired to change his monkey-jacket three hundred and sixty-five times in a year for an overcoat, or an overcoat for a monkey-jacket, he could do it most expeditiously, without the waste of any raw material more expensive than paint; and thus the system, after a time, by a happy thought, got the name of the “three-sixty-five interchangeable.” Of course, this answered very well so long as the weather continued mild and pleasant; but later in the season, when it became cool and frosty, experience soon showed that the warming qualities of different kinds of paint were not essentially different; that something more than confidence was necessary to keep out the cold; and that the temperature and circulation of the body physical remained unaffected, whether a man painted himself sky-blue one day and pea-green the next.²⁹