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Book VI.

Finance, Industry, Trans

portation.

Finance, Industry, Transportation.

EARLY FORMS OF CURRENCY.

Skins of wild animals cured constitute one of the earliest forms of currency known, and while employed in the most ancient times, are not yet disused in some portions of the world. Such a medium seems appropriate among those who subsist by the chase, as all primeval peoples must in some degree, and it is not, therefore, surprising to find that in the transactions of the Hudson Bay Fur Company with the Indians, the unit of value by which the price of other articles was reckoned was the beaver skin.

East India, Siam, and among some of the islands of the Indian Archipelago. Among the Fijians whales' teeth pass readily from hand to hand, effecting all necessary interchanges, the red teeth being taken at about twenty times the value of the white ones.

Ornaments of all kinds have in all times constituted measures of value. In Egypt, Phoenicia, Etruria, and many other ancient countries, as well as in Ireland and Northumbria, rings have been found which were designed to serve the double purpose of ornament and currency, and the same dual function Pastoral people employ similarly the skins may be ascribed to the anklets, armlets, and of tame animals, originally delivering the en- earrings which are worn throughout British tire skin, a cumbrous process deficient in con- India, Persia, Egypt, and Abyssinia. The venience and economy, but finally employing a Goths and Celts fashioned their rings of thick small disc cut from the leather as a represent- golden wire wound in spirals, from which vaative of its value. Live stock is also widely rious lengths could be broken to accommodate employed, as it has been from the days of the varying needs of traffic. Gold chains have Abraham, and though a rude, it is still a sub- been similarly employed. In many countries stantially uniform, denominator of value. The golden beads are yet hoarded, worn, and circuGreeks stamped the image of an ox on a piece lated, fulfilling thus the triple functions of of leather, and the image had thence the cur- money, inasmuch as they constitute at once rent value of the animal represented. In the a store of value, a standard of value, and East, the camel, the ass, and the sheep have an instrument of exchange. Amber was been, ever since they were subdued to the uses used as currency by the savage races of of mankind, employed to reckon possessions the Baltic in the period of the Roman door determine the amount of tribute or marriage minion, as it still is in some of the regions portions. In Lapland and some portions of of the East. The Egyptian scarabee carved Sweden and Norway, the amount of wealth on sard or nephrite or other precious stones, possessed by a person is denominated in rein- circulated freely throughout the Mediterranean deer. Among the Tartars the number of mares coasts and islands probably before the first similarly determines the opulence of their pos- Phoenician coin was impressed; and engraved sessors. Among the Esquimaux it is custom- gems and precious stones were employed to ary to speak of one another as worth so many transfer wealth as well from one country to dogs. another as from hand to hand until a comparSlaves have been employed to determine atively recent period. In Africa ivory tusks ratios of value since the state of bondage was pass to and fro in the processes of trade, rudely first established among men. In New Guinea defining the ratio of value of other articles. the slave is still the unit by which the value of Among the Tartars, bricks of tea, or cubes of other possessions is recorded, as he used to be that herb pressed into a solid form, pass from among the Portuguese traders of the Gold hand to hand as freely as beaver skins do at Coast. The Portuguese also found small mats the trading posts of Hudson Bay or the Sascalled libongoes, valued at about one and one katchewan. Among the Malayans the only half pence each, employed as currency on the currency entirely equal to the requirements of African coast, and bunches of red feathers trade consists of rough hardware, such as hoes, serve by their comparative stability to mark shovels, and the like. Pieces of cotton cloth the fluctuations of yams and breech-clouts in of a fixed length, called Guinea cloth, for a some of the tropical islands of the Pacific. long period constituted the unit of value in Some tribes of North American Indians found Senegal, Abyssinia, Mexico, Peru, Siberia, and wampum as useful in their rather limited mer-some of the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In cantile transactions as the merchant of South street or Burling slip finds greenbacks or bills of exchange.

Cowry shells are still extensively used in

Sumatra, cubes of beeswax of a fixed weight; in Scotland handmade nails; in Switzerland, eggs; in Newfoundland, dried codfish; in Virginia, tobacco; in Yucatan, cacao nuts; in

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