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.
At last, after the flat disks or coins had been for some time in
circulation, and the community had found out, by repeatedly weighing
and testing them, that each disk represented a constant weight of
gold of uniform purity, the idea came at once to every one that the
only use of the fanciful images and inscriptions on the disks was to
officially testify to the fact of their uniformity of weight and value;
and then every body wondered that he could have been so stupid as not
to have before recognized the idea and adopted it, in place of every
man weighing, cutting up, and testing his gold every time he desired
to part with or receive it in making an exchange. An arrangement was
accordingly at once made for a public establishment--afterward called
a mint--to which every person who so desired could bring his gold and
receive it back again after it had been divided into suitable pieces of
determinate weight and fineness; the fact that the weight and fineness
of each piece had been so proved being indicated by appropriate marks
upon the metal. And in this manner "coined money" first came into use
on the island. And by this time, also, the money which Robinson Crusoe
found in the chest, and which, when it first came into his possession,
had neither utility, value, nor use as a standard, or measure of value,
had gradually acquired all these several attributes: utility, when the
material of which it was composed became capable of satisfying some
human desire for it, as an ornament, as a symbol of worship, or for
some mechanical or chemical purpose; value (the sole result of labor),
when it became an object of or equivalent in exchange, or acquired a
power of purchasing other things; a standard, or measure of value,
when its purchasing power, by reason of various circumstances, was
found to be, if not absolutely permanent, at least more permanent,
on the average, than that of any other commodity.
The conversion of money into coin was something purely artificial, and
the result of law, or statute enactments, the sole object of which was
simply to make the money (previously in use) true and in the highest
degree convenient. But, as has already been pointed out, money came
into use in the first instance without statute, and was the result,
as it were, of men's instincts; and the subsequent choice by them
of gold, in preference to any other commodities for use as money,
was for reasons similar to those which induced men to choose silk,
wool, flax, and cotton as materials for clothing; and stone, brick,
and timber as materials for houses. It was the thing best adapted to
supply the want needed.
The introduction and use of coined money at once gave an impetus
to business, and made the people richer, because it saved time and
labor in making exchanges, and relieved every man from the trouble
and expense of buying and carrying round with him scales and other
tests. The only persons dissatisfied were the scale-makers, who found
their business almost destroyed, and they petitioned the authorities
to have their interests protected by the enactment of a law compelling
all persons to weigh their coins with scales before exchanging, as
formerly they did their gold. But, as every body at once saw that the
effect of such a law would be equivalent to compelling all exchangers
to do useless work, the petition amounted to nothing.
For convenience in speaking and writing, also, each piece of gold or
coin of determinate weight and fineness regularly issued by the mint
received a particular name and had a particular device impressed on
it. Thus, for example, the piece of lowest denomination, containing
25.8 grains of standard gold, which had on it a likeness of Crusoe's
old and faithful servant, was called a "Friday;" a piece of ten times
its weight and value, with a small portrait of the founder of the
island community, was called a "Crusoe;" and a piece of double the
weight of the last, or twenty times the weight of the first, with
a large portrait on it, was called a "Robinson Crusoe" or a "double
Crusoe." Some time after, when the island became generally known to the
rest of the world, it was found that these coins exactly corresponded
in weight, fineness, and value with those adopted in that foreign
country called the United States, and there known under the names of
the gold dollar, eagle, and double-eagle; and after a time, for the
purpose of favoring the development of civilization and assimilating
nationalities by the adoption of a common monetary standard, it was
agreed to discard all local sentiments, and to substitute the latter
names for the former.