A NEW SOCIAL ORDER OF THINGS.
The first person that came to join Robinson Crusoe on his island was
Friday, and next, Friday's father. But even with this increase of
numbers there was still no use for the money, inasmuch as the three
constituted but one family, the members of which labored and shared
all useful things they acquired in common, and made no exchanges. But
when Will Atkins and the English sailors came, and the population of
the island, we may suppose, was largely and permanently increased,
a new social order of things became inevitable. Incompatibility of
taste and temper, and a natural desire for personal independence,
soon made it impossible for all to live and share in common as one
family. And self-interest also soon taught, that, in order that the
quantity of useful things available for the new community as a whole
might be increased, and their quality perfected, it was desirable,
that, instead of each man endeavoring to supply all his own wants,
and for this purpose following irregularly the business of a carpenter,
baker, tailor, mason, and the like, it was best for each man to pursue
but one occupation, and, making himself skilled in it, procure the
things which he himself did not produce, and which he might need, by
exchanging his own products or services for the products or services of
some other man. They saw instinctively that Robinson Crusoe, although
originally civilized, would, if he had remained alone on the island,
have inevitably become a pure savage, and simply because he was
alone, and could make no exchanges. For a time, the things which he
obtained from the wreck raised him above this condition; for what the
ship brought him--the knives, axes, guns, cloth, etc.--were capital,
or the accumulated labor of other men. But if the ship had given him
nothing, he would have had to make every thing for himself--"his hat,
his garments, his feet-covering, his bread, his meat with bow and
arrows, his house by blows of his hatchet, his hatchet by blows of
his hammer, his hammer heaven knows how"--and become a barbarian in
spite of himself, because all his effort would have been required,
and would have only sufficed, to insure him a bare subsistence.
Systematic division of labor and the exchange of products and services
thus, for the first time on the island, came in, and constituted a
part of the perfected machinery of production, or the means of getting
a living. And it is also to be here noted, that, because commodities
and services now for the first time became exchangeable, they also
for the first time acquired the attribute which we call value.