in the first instance into wares which have become money. For such persons, by the exchange of their less salable wares for those which as money are most salable, attain not merely, as heretofore, a higher probability, but the certainty of being able to acquire forthwith equivalent quantities of every other kind of commodity to be had in the market. And their control over these depends simply upon their pleasure and their choice. Pecuniam habens, habet omnem rem quem vult habere.

On the other hand, he who brings other wares than money to market finds himself at a disadvantage more or less. To gain the same command over what the market affords, he must first convert his exchangeable goods into money. The nature of his economic disability is shown by the fact of his being compelled to overcome a difficulty before he can attain his purpose, which difficulty does not exist for, i.e., has already been overcome by, the man who owns a stock of money.

Thus the effect produced by such goods as are relatively most salable becoming money is an increasing differentiation between their degree of salableness and that of all other goods. And this difference in salableness ceases to be altogether gradual and must be regarded in a certain aspect as something absolute. The practice of everyday life, as well as jurisprudence, which closely adheres for the most part to the notions prevalent in everyday life, distinguish two categories in the wherewithal of traffic-goods which have become money and goods which have not. And the ground of this distinction, we find, lies essentially in that difference in the salableness of commodities set forth above a difference so significant for practical life and which comes to be further emphasized by intervention of the state.

It is obvious how highly significant a factor is habit in the genesis of such generally serviceable means of exchange. It lies in the economic interests of each trafficking individual to exchange less salable for more salable commodities. But the willing acceptance of the medium of exchange presupposes already a knowledge of these interests on the part of those economic subjects who are expected to accept in exchange for their wares a commodity which in and by itself is perhaps entirely useless to them. It is certain that this knowledge never arises in every part of the nation at the same time. It is only in the first instance a limited number of economic subjects who will recognize the advantage in such procedure, an advantage

which, in and by itself, is independent of the general recognition of a commodity as a medium of exchange, inasmuch as such an exchange, always and under all circumstances, brings the economic unit a good deal nearer to his goal, to the acquisition of useful things of which he really stands in need. But it is admitted that there is no better method of enlightening anyone about his economic interests than that he perceive the economic success of those who use the right means to secure their own. Hence it is also clear that nothing may have been so favourable to the genesis of a medium of exchange as the acceptance, on the part of the most discerning and capable economic subjects, for their own economic gain, and over a considerable period of time, of eminently salable goods in preference to all others. In this way practice and habit have certainly contributed not a little to cause goods, which were most salable at any time, to be accepted, not only by many, but finally by all, economic subjects in exchange for their less salable goods: and not only so, but to be accepted from the first with the intention of exchanging them away again.

It is not impossible for media of exchange, serving as they do the commonweal in the most emphatic sense of the word, to be instituted also by way of legislation, like other social institutions. But this is neither the only nor the primary mode in which money has taken its origin. This is much more to be traced in the process depicted above, notwithstanding the nature of that process would be but very incompletely explained if we were to call it "organic," or denote money as something "primordial," of "primeval growth," and so forth. Putting aside assumptions which are historically unsound, we can come fully to understand the origin of money only by learning to view the establishment of the social procedure, with which we are dealing, as the spontaneous outcome, the unpremeditated resultant, of particular, individual efforts of the members of a society who have little by little worked their way to a discrimination of the different degrees of salableness in commodities.

35. THE ORIGIN OF MONEY THROUGH INTERTRIBAL

RELATIONS'

BY CARL BÜCHER

One fancies the genesis of exchange to have been very easy, because civilized man is accustomed to find all that he needs ready made at the market or store and to be able to obtain it for money.

1 Adapted from Industrial Evolution, pp. 60-68 (Wickett's translation). (Henry Holt & Co., 1893.)

With primitive man, however, value and price were by no means current conceptions. The first discoverers of Australia found invariably that the aborigines had no conception of exchange. The ornaments offered them had no power whatever to arouse their interest; gifts pressed upon them were found later strewn about in the woods where they had been cast in neglect. Yet there was between tribes a brisk trade in pots, stone hatchets, hammocks, cotton threads, necklaces of mussel shells, and many other products.

This exchange between tribes arises by way of presents, or robbery, spoils of war, fine, compensation, and winning in gaming. Within the tribe goods are shared largely in common. It is looked upon as theft if a herd of cattle is slaughtered and not shared with one's neighbors, or if one is eating and neglects to invite a passer-by. Anyone can enter a hut at will and demand food; and he is never refused. Whole communities, if a poor harvest befall, visit their neighbors and look to them for temporary support. For articles of use and implements there exists a universal custom of loaning which really assumes the character of a duty; and there is no private ownership of the soil. In such a community there is no occasion for direct barter. Exceptions occur when purchasing a wife and making presents to the medicine man, the singer, the dancer, and the minstrel, who are the only persons carrying on a species of separate occupation.

From tribe to tribe there prevail rules of hospitality, which recur with tolerable similarity among all primitive peoples. The stranger on arriving receives a present which after a certain interval he reciprocates, and at his departure another present is handed him. On both sides wishes may be expressed with regard to these gifts. In this way it is possible to obtain things required or desired, and success is the more assured inasmuch as neither party is absolved from the obligations of hospitality until the other declares himself satisfied with the presents. This custom of reciprocal gifts of hospitality permits rare products of a land or artistic creations of a tribe to circulate from people to people, and to cover just as wide distance from their origin as in the case of modern trade.

Once originated, exchange long retains the marks of its descent in the rules that are attached to it and which are taken directly from the customs connected with gifts. Among many peoples a gift precedes or follows a deal; the "good measure" of our village storekeepers and "treating" are survivals of this custom. To decline.

without grounds an exchange that has been offered passes among the Negroes as an insult, just as the refusal of a gift among ourselves. The idea that service interchanged must be of equal value can hardly be made intelligible to primitive man.

As time passes, exchange creates from tribe to tribe its own contrivances for facilitating matters. Most important of these are markets and money. Markets are uniformly held among Negroes, East Indians, and Polynesians in open places, often in the midst of the primeval forests, on the tribal borders. They form neutral districts within which all tribal hostilities must cease; whoever violates the market peace exposes himself to the severest punishments. Each tribe brings to the market whatever is peculiar to it; one honey, another palm-wine, and a third dried meat, still another earthenware or mats or woven stuffs. The object of the interchange is to obtain products that cannot be procured in one's own tribe at all, or at least cannot be produced so well or so artistically as in neighboring tribes. This must again lead each tribe to produce in greater quantities than it requires those products which are valued among the tribes not producing them.

Now with regard to money. How much has been written and imagined about the many species of money among primitive peoples, and yet how simple the explanation of their origin! The money of each tribe is that trading commodity which it does not itself produce, but which it regularly acquires from other tribes by way of exchange. Such an article naturally becomes the universal medium of exchange for the tribe. It is the measure of value according to which property is valued. Fellow-tribesmen soon come to employ it also in transferring values, for because of its scarcity it is equally welcome to all. Thus is explained what our travellers have frequently observed, that in each tribe, often in passing from village to village, a different money is current. In this way also is to be explained the further fact, which has come under observation, of exchangeable commodities naturally scarce, such as salt, cowry shells, and bars of copper, or products of rare skill, such as European calicoes, guns, powder, knives, becoming general mediums of exchange.

B. Forms of Primitive Money

36. REQUISITES OF A SATISFACTORY MONEY MATERIAL'

By W. STANLEY JEVONS

To decide upon the best material for money is a problem of great complexity, because we must take into account at once the relative importance of the several functions of money, the degree in which money is employed for each function, and the importance of each of the physical qualities of the substance with respect to each function. In a simple state of industry money is chiefly required to pass about between buyers and sellers. It should then be conveniently portable, divisible into pieces of various size, so that any sum may readily be made up, and easily distinguishable by its appearance, or by the design impressed upon it. When money, however, comes to serve, as it will at some future time, almost exclusively as a measure and standard of value, the system of exchange being one of perfected barter, such properties become a matter of comparative indifference, and stability of value, joined perhaps to portability, is the most important quality. Before venturing, however, to discuss such complex questions, we must proceed to a preliminary discussion of the properties in question, which may thus perhaps be enumerated in the order of their importance: (a) utility and value; (b) portability; (c) indestructibility; (d) homogeneity; (e) divisibility; (f) stability of value; (g) cognizability.

a) Utility and value. Since money has to be exchanged for valuable goods, it should itself possess value, and it must therefore have utility as the basis of value.

When once a substance is widely employed as money, it is conceivable that its utility will come to depend mainly upon the services which it thus confers upon the community. Gold, for instance, is far more important as the material of money than in the production of plate, jewelry, watches, gold-leaf, etc. A substance originally used for many purposes may eventually serve only as money, and yet, by the demand for currency and the force of habit, may maintain its value. The cowry circulation of the Indian coasts is probably a case in point. The importance of habit, personal or hereditary, is at least as great in monetary science as it is in morals and sociological phenomena generally. There is no reason to suppose that the value of Adapted from Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (1875), pp. 30-39. (D. Appleton & Co.)

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