ROBINSON CRUSOE'S MONEY;
Or, the
Remarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunes
of a Remote Island Community.
By
DAVID A. WELLS,
Late U. S. Special Commissioner of Revenue.
"It requires a great deal of
philosophy to observe once
what may be seen every day."
--Rousseau.
New York:
Harper & Brothers, Publishers,
Franklin Square.
1876.
PREFACE.
The origin of this little book is as follows: Some months ago, the
expediency was suggested to the author, by certain prominent friends
of hard money in this country, of preparing for popular reading--and
possibly for political campaign purposes--a little tract, or essay,
in which the elementary principles underlying the important subjects
of money and currency should be presented and illustrated from the
simplest A B C stand-point. That such a work was desirable, and that
none of the very great number of speeches and essays already published
on these topics in all respects answered the existing requirement,
was admitted; but how to invest subjects, so often discussed, and so
commonly regarded as dry and abstract, with sufficient new interest
to render them at once attractive and intelligible to those whose
tastes disincline them to close reasoning and investigation, was a
matter not easy to determine.
At last the old idea--recognized in fables, allegories, and
parables--of making a story the medium for communicating instruction,
suggested itself; and, in accordance with the suggestion, a remote
island community has been imagined, in which, starting from conditions
but one remove from barbarism, but gradually rising to a high
degree of civilization, the progress, the use, and the abuse of the
instrumentalities and mechanism of exchange--through barter, money,
and currency--have been traced consecutively; and the effect of the
application of not a few of the most popular fiscal recommendations
and theories of the day practically worked out and recorded. And,
in carrying out this scheme, the reader will not fail to perceive, by
reference to the marginal notes accompanying the text, that hardly an
absurdity in reference to exchange, money, or currency can be imagined,
which somewhere and at some time has not had its exact counterpart
in actual history or experience.
If any apology for the objects designed or the course pursued is
needed, the author thinks he finds it in the precedent established
by the illustrious Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., who, in the introduction
to his "Tales of a Traveler," thus happily sets forth the special
advantage which accrues from the proper employment of a story as a
means of communicating information. "I am not," he says, "for those
barefaced tales which carry their moral on their surface, staring one
in the face; on the contrary, I have often hid my moral from sight,
and disguised it as much as possible by sweets and spices; so that
while the simple reader is listening with open mouth to a ghost or
love story, he may have a bolus of sound morality popped down his
throat, and be never the wiser for the fraud."
Whether in "Robinson Crusoe's Money" the author shall succeed in
inducing his fellow-countrymen--to whom the ordinary currency medicine
is becoming distasteful--to swallow without wry faces the same dose
sugar-coated, remains to be determined.
Norwich, Conn., January, 1876.
CONTENTS.
Chapter I. Page
The Three Great Bags of Money 11
Chapter II.
A New Social Order of Things 13
Chapter III.
The Period of Barter 15
Chapter IV.
How They Invented Money 20
Chapter V.
How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom 26
Chapter VI.
Gold, and How they Came to Use It 33
Chapter VII.
How the Islanders Determined to be an Honest and Free People 50
Chapter VIII.
How the People on the Island Came to Use Currency in the Place of
Money 55
Chapter IX.
War with the Cannibals, and What Came of It 60
Chapter X.
After the War 72
Chapter XI.
The New Millennium 83
Chapter XII.
Getting Sober 108
ROBINSON CRUSOE'S MONEY.
CHAPTER I.
THE THREE GREAT BAGS OF MONEY.
All who have read "Robinson Crusoe" (and who has not?) will remember
the circumstance of his opening, some time after he had become
domiciled on his desolate island, one of the chests that had come
to him from the ship. In it he found pins, needles and thread, a
pair of large scissors, "ten or a dozen good knives," some cloth,
about a dozen and a half of white linen handkerchiefs concerning
which he remarks, "They were exceedingly refreshing to wipe my face
on a warm day;" and, finally, hidden away in the till of the chest,
"three great bags of money--gold as well as silver."
The finding of all these articles--the money excepted--it will be
further remembered, greatly delighted the heart of Crusoe; inasmuch
as they increased his store of useful things, and therefore increased
his comfort and happiness. But in respect to the money the case was
entirely different. It was a thing to him, under the circumstances,
absolutely worthless, and over its presence and finding he soliloquized
as follows: "I smiled at myself at the sight of all this money. 'Oh,
drug!' said I, aloud, 'what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to
me, no, not the taking off the ground. One of these knives is worth
all this heap. Nay, I would give it all for a gross of tobacco-pipes;
for sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrot seed from England; or for a
handful of pease and beans, and a bottle of ink.'"
In introducing this episode in the life of his hero, nothing was
probably further from the thought of the author, De Foe, than the
intent to give his readers a lesson in political economy. And yet it
would be difficult to find an illustration which conveys in so simple
a manner to him who reflects upon it so much of information in respect
to the nature of that which is popularly termed "wealth;" or so good
a basis for reasoning correctly in respect to the origin and function
of that which we call "money." And in such reasoning, the truth of
the following propositions is too evident to require demonstration:
1st. The pins and needles, the scissors, knives, and cloth were of
great utility to Robinson Crusoe, because their possession satisfied
a great desire on his part to have them, and greatly increased his
comfort and happiness.
2d. Possessing utility, they nevertheless possessed no exchangeable
value, because they could not be bought or sold, or, what is the same
thing, exchanged with any body for any thing.
3d. They had, moreover, no price, for they had no purchasing power
which could be expressed as money.
4th. The money, which is popularly regarded as the symbol and the
concentration of all wealth, had, under the circumstances, neither
utility, value, nor price. It could not be eaten, drunk, worn, used as
a tool, or exchanged with any body for any thing, and fully merited
the appellation which Crusoe in another place gives it, of "sorry,
worthless stuff."
Finally, the pins, needles, knives, cloth, and scissors were all
capital to Robinson Crusoe, because they were all instrumentalities
capable of being used to produce something additional, to him useful
or desirable. The money was not capital, under the circumstances,
because it could not be used to produce any thing.
Starting, then, with a condition of things on the island in which
money had clearly neither utility nor value, let us next consider
under what change of domestic circumstances it could become useful,
acquire value, become an object of exchange, and constitute a standard
for establishing prices.