SOURCE BOOK IN ECONOMICS ORIGIN OF EXCHANGE-SPENCER'S THEORY [IN his Principles of Sociology, Herbert Spencer suggests that barter, and exchange for money, may have grown out of the exchange of presents; and he gives some evidence in support of this view. In discussing ceremonial institutions he shows that the custom of giving presents developed into the various forms of tribute, taxation, sacrifice, and ecclesiastical offerings. He then says (Vol. II, pp. 99– 100; reproduced by permission of the publishers, D. Appleton and Co., New York; three volumes, 1895 and 1896):] Something must be added concerning presents passing between those who do not stand in acknowledged relations of superior and inferior. Consideration of these carries us back to the primitive form of present-making, as it occurs between members of alien societies; and on looking at some of the facts, there is suggested a question of much interest: Whether from the propitiatory gift made under these circumstances there does not originate another important kind of social action? Barter is not, as we are apt to suppose, universally understood. Cook, speaking of his failure to make any exchange of articles with the Australians, says, "They had, indeed, no idea of traffic." And other statements suggest that when exchange begins, the thought of equivalence between the things given and received scarcely arises. Of the Ostyaks, who supplied them "with plenty of fish and wildfowl," Bell remarks, 1 [Compare with A. Smith's idea of a "propensity in human nature to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another." Wealth of Nations, book i, ch. 2.—ED.] "Give them only a little tobacco and a dram of brandy, and they ask no more, not knowing the use of money." Remembering that at first no means of measuring values exists, and that the conception of equality of value has to grow by use, it seems not impossible that mutual propitiation by gifts was the act from which barter arose: the expectation that the present received would be of like worth with that given being gradually established, and the exchanged articles simultaneously losing the character of presents. One may, indeed, see the connection between the two in the familiar cases of gifts made by European travelers to native chiefs; as where Mungo Park writes: "Presented Mansa Kussan [the chief man of Julifunda] with some amber, coral, and scarlet, with which he appeared to be perfectly satisfied, and sent a bullock in return." Such transactions show us both the original meaning of the initial present as propitiatory, and the idea that the responsive present should have an approximately-like value: implying informal barter. Nay more. Certain usages of the North American Indians suggest that even a circulating medium may originate from propitiatory presents. Catlin writes: Wampum has been invariably manufactured, and highly valued as a circulating medium (instead of coins, of which the Indians have no knowledge); so many strings, or so many hands' breadth, being the fixed value of a horse, a gun, a robe, etc. In treaties the wampum belt has been passed as the pledge of friendship, and from time immemorial sent to hostile tribes, as the messenger of peace; or paid by so many fathoms' length, as tribute to conquering enemies. [In the part on "Industrial Institutions," originally published ten years later than the foregoing, Spencer says, Vol. III, pp. 387-391]: Among incidents of human intercourse few seem simpler than barter; and the underlying conception is one which even the stupidest among savages are supposed to understand. It is not so, however. In . . . treating of Ceremonial Institutions, reasons were given for suspecting that barter arose from the giving of presents and the receipt of presents in re turn. Beyond the evidence there assigned there is sufficient further evidence to justify this conclusion. In the narrative of an early voyager, whose name I do not remember, occurs the statement that barter was not understood by the Australian savages: a statement which I recollect thinking scarcely credible. Verifying testimonies have, however, since come to hand. Concerning the New Guinea people we read: One of the most curious features noticed by Dr. Miklucho Maclay was the apparent absence of trade or barter among the people of Astrolabe Bay. They exchange presents, however, when different tribes visit each other, somewhat as among the New Zealanders, each party giving the other what they have to spare; but no one article seems ever to be exchanged for another of supposed equivalent value. Confirmation is yielded by the account D'Albertis gives of certain natives from the interior of New Guinea. Concerning one who came on board he says: I asked him for the belt he wore round his waist, in exchange for some glass beads, but he did not seem to understand the proposal, which I had to make in pantomime instead of vocal language. He spoke a few words with his people, and then he took off his belt, and received in exchange the beads and the looking-glass, in which he seemed afraid to look at himself. When, however, he was on the point of returning to shore, he wanted to have his belt back, and it was impossible to make him understand that he had sold it, and that if he did not wish to part with it he must return the articles he had received in exchange. Another instance, somewhat different in its aspect, comes to us from Samoa. Turner says that at a burial "every one brought a present, and the day after the funeral these presents were all so distributed again as that every one went away with something in return for what he brought." Of a remote people, the tribes of Nootka Sound, we read as follows in Bancroft: They manifest much shrewdness in their exchanges; even their system of presents is a species of trade, the full value of each gift being confidently expected in a return present on the next festive occasion. |