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.
Chapter III.
The Period of Barter
All exchanges must, however, in the first instance, have been made directly, or, as we term it, by barter; so much of one commodity or service being given for so much of some other commodity or service—corn for cloth, furs and skins for knives or tobacco, so much labor in building a house for so much skill in constructing a canoe. But in all this method of exchanging, which, while it is the most ancient, is also one which still extensively prevails in even the most civilized societies, there was no place for the use or intervention of money; and consequently, also, there was no such thing as price; for price, as before stated, is the purchasing power of any commodity or service expressed in money.
But the people on Robinson Crusoe Island soon found out by experience that there was an obstacle in the way of carrying on all exchanges according to the principle of direct barter, so serious in its nature as to constitute, unless removed, a complete bar to any further considerable progress in civilization and social development. And the discovery happened somewhat in this wise:
Twist, who was a tailor, and had made a coat, discovered all at once that he was out of bread; and being hungry, suspended work, and went in search of Needum, the baker, to effect an exchange. He found him without difficulty, just heating his oven, and with plenty of bread to dispose of; but as the baker had all the coats he wanted, he declined to trade. Needum, however, kindly informed Twist that if any fellow should call with any surplus grain or flour, he (Needum) would be most happy to supply him with all the bread he needed in exchange; but as the tailor was neither a farmer nor a miller, and had neither of these articles, he (Twist) set off for the other end of the island, where there was another baker, to see how the latter was situated in respect to garments. On his way, Twist was overtaken by Pecks, the mason, who had no coat, and, wanting the very garment which Twist had been making, had stopped work on a stone wall and gone in search of the tailor, to whom he proposed to exchange the coat for a new chimney. But as Twist had already two chimneys to his house, and nothing to cook, and didn’t want another chimney, the mason was as unsuccessful in his effort to trade with the tailor as the tailor had been just before with the baker. At last, after much vexatious traveling about, involving great waste of time and labor, Twist found a baker who wanted to exchange bread for the coat, and Pecks a tailor who would give a coat for a chimney; Needum having, in the mean time, shut up his bakery and gone in search of Diggs, the farmer, who was willing to supply grain for bread. But when all these different persons, each desirous of exchanging his special products or services, had been found, and had come together, a new perplexity at once made its appearance, and one so embarrassing as to cause each man seriously to consider whether it were not better to return home and endeavor to produce every thing for himself, rather than attempt to exchange any thing. “For how,” said they all, “is the comparative value of our different commodities and services which we propose to exchange to be ascertained?” “How can I know,” said Twist, “how many loaves I ought to receive for my coat?” “Or I,” said Pecks, “find out how high and broad a chimney I ought to make for my garment?” Diggs, furthermore, got up a little private dispute of his own with Needum, growing out of the circumstance that the latter wanted to make his entire payment in bread to the former at once; while Diggs, who did not relish the idea of living on stale and possibly moldy bread for an indefinite length of time, wanted pay for his grain, from the baker, at the rate of one fresh loaf per day. As for poor Twist, he had become by this time so humble through hunger that he had not the heart to object to the proposition to take a cart-load of bread at once in exchange for his coat, although his house was so small that he knew he would have to store part of his “pay” on the roof, where it would be certain to be eaten by others than his own family.
There was another incident which happened about this time which made much talk among the island community. A man who had nothing to sell but his labor had been employed to load a vessel with coal—a vein of which had been discovered; and, after working faithfully all day, had received in pay for his services a ton of coal. But as it was meat, drink, and lodging, and not coal (although the latter was greatly needed for some purposes), which the laborer wanted, there was nothing left for the laborer to do but to attempt to exchange his coal, and that, too, as soon as possible, in order to satisfy his immediate necessities. Being too poor to hire a horse and cart, he therefore borrowed a wheelbarrow, and, filling it with coal, went in search of persons who had a surplus of meat, drink, and lodgings to dispose of. But all of them happened to have all the coal they wanted; and morning found the laborer still trundling through the streets his most useful commodity unexchanged, and ready to sink with hunger and exposure. A like experience befell also the journeyman butcher, blacksmith, carpenter, and dry-goods clerk, who received for their day’s labor respectively a sheep-skin, a dozen horse-shoes, a piece of pine timber, and two yards of red flannel. All were in no condition, through bodily exhaustion, to resume work on the next day; and all also clearly saw that their condition would not have been much improved, if each had received an entire payment in either meat, drink, or lodging, in place of coal, skin, lumber, horseshoes, or cloth.
The laborers, therefore, held a meeting, and at once resolved: “That whereas it was evident that the system of paying for labor with a portion of the commodity which each laborer produced would necessitate as much time and labor to make their wages serviceable to their wants as was required in the first instance to earn said wages; therefore, it was but right and proper that the employers should allow the laborers to use half of the whole time for which they were paid, for the purpose of rendering their wages wholly available for their immediate necessities.” But to this the employers rejoined that such an agreement would be equivalent not only to doubling the proportion of wages to direct production, but also to impairing, to the extent of one-half, the effectiveness of all labor engaged in production, thereby increasing scarcity, diminishing abundance, and rendering further advance in material development exceedingly slow, if not altogether impossible. For a time, therefore, there was a prospect of a very serious difficulty between the representatives of labor and the representatives of capital; resulting, as is always the case, in immense losses, not only to those directly concerned, but to the whole community.
Chapter IV.
How They Invented Money
The people on the island—both laborers and employers—were, however, fully agreed that life was too short to waste a good part of it in a game of “blindman’s-buff” on a large scale—for such this attempt to conduct exchanges on a basis of direct barter substantially was;1 but they nevertheless also clearly perceived that the game would continue to be played, to the interruption of all material progress, unless some other method of exchanging could be devised and adopted. Under the guidance, therefore, as it were, of instinct (Robinson Crusoe encouraging), and without any enactment of law, Twist, Needum, Pecks, Diggs, Friday, Friday’s father, Will Atkins, and every body else, by common consent, agreed to select and adopt some single commodity which all should agree to take in exchange for whatever of products or services they might have to dispose of; so that whenever any one had any thing to exchange, he might first exchange it for this commodity, whatever it might be, and then with such intermediate object purchase at such times and places, and in such proportions as he might desire, whatever he might need. And the moment this was done, civilization on the island took a long step forward, and the first great
That the inconveniences experienced by a community attempting to conduct its exchanges exclusively by pure and direct barter as here depicted, are not only not imaginary, but have their exact counterpart in the present every-day experiences of countries of great geographical area and population, is proved by the testimony of Barth, Burton, and other recent travelers in Eastern Africa. Thus Barth, for example, says (see “Travels,” vol. i., p. 568; vol. iii., p. 203) that he was repeatedly prevented from buying what he absolutely needed—corn, rice, etc.—because he did not have, and could not get, what the people wanted in exchange; and, again (vol. ii., p. 51), he states that so great was the difficulty of getting things in some of the African towns which he visited, in consequence of the people having no general medium of exchange, that his servants would often return from their purchasing expeditions in a state of the utmost exhaustion.
