Read Ebook: The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards by Ridgeway William

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Ebook has 1843 lines and 162146 words, and 37 pages

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there is anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, Oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hand under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are the wisest. They are the magi.

BOOTH TARKINGTON

A Reward of Merit

Penrod and Sam made a gloomy discovery one morning in mid-October. All the week had seen amiable breezes and fair skies until Saturday, when, about breakfast-time, the dome of heaven filled solidly with gray vapor and began to drip. The boys' discovery was that there is no justice about the weather.

They sat in the carriage-house of the Schofields' empty stable; the doors upon the alley were open, and Sam and Penrod stared torpidly at the thin but implacable drizzle which was the more irritating because there was barely enough of it to interfere with a number of things they had planned to do.

"Well, nobody with any sense cares if it rains Sunday and Monday," said Penrod. "I wouldn't care if it rained every Sunday as long as I lived; but I just like to know what's the reason it had to go and rain to-day. Got all the days o' the week to choose from and goes and picks on Saturday. That's a fine biz'nuss!"

It was a curious sound, loud and hollow and unhuman, yet it seemed to be a cough. Both boys rose, and Penrod asked uneasily, "Where'd that noise come from?"

"It's in the alley," said Sam.

Perhaps if the day had been bright, both of them would have stepped immediately to the alley doors to investigate; but their actual procedure was to move a little distance in the opposite direction. The strange cough sounded again.

Then both boys uttered smothered exclamations and jumped, for the long, gaunt head which appeared in the doorway was entirely unexpected. It was the cavernous and melancholy head of an incredibly thin, old, whitish horse. This head waggled slowly from side to side; the nostrils vibrated; the mouth opened, and the hollow cough sounded again.

Recovering themselves, Penrod and Sam underwent the customary human reaction from alarm to indignation.

And Sam, seizing a stick, hurled it at the intruder.

"Get out o' here!" he roared.

The aged horse nervously withdrew his head, turned tail, and made a rickety flight up the alley, while Sam and Penrod, perfectly obedient to inherited impulse, ran out into the drizzle and uproariously pursued. They were but automatons of instinct, meaning no evil. Certainly they did not know the singular and pathetic history of the old horse who had wandered into the alley and ventured to look through the open door.

This horse, about twice the age of either Penrod or Sam, had lived to find himself in a unique position. He was nude, possessing neither harness nor halter; all he had was a name, Whitey, and he would have answered to it by a slight change of expression if any one had thus properly addressed him. So forlorn was Whitey's case, he was actually an independent horse; he had not even an owner. For two days and a half he had been his own master.

Previous to that period he had been the property of one Abalene Morris, a person of color, who would have explained himself as engaged in the hauling business. On the contrary, the hauling business was an insignificant side line with Mr. Morris, for he had long ago given himself, as utterly as fortune permitted, to that talent which, early in youth, he had recognized as the greatest of all those surging in his bosom. In his waking thoughts and in his dreams, in health and in sickness, Abalene Morris was the dashing and emotional practitioner of an art proba

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ARISTOTLE.

Let us here propound the doctrine which seeks to obtain an explanation of the origin for weight-standards more in accordance with the facts of history and the process of development as exemplified both in ancient and modern times.

When in a certain community one particular kind of commodity is of general use and generally available, this comes to form the unit in terms of which all values are expressed. The nature of this barter-unit will depend upon the nature of the climate and geographical position, and likewise upon the stage of culture to which the people have attained. In the hunting stage, all the property of each individual consists in his weapons and implements of war and the chase, and the skins of wild beasts which form his clothing, and sometimes the cover of his hut or wigwam. At a later stage, when he has succeeded in taming the ox, the sheep, or the goat, or the horse, he is the owner of property in domestic animals, whose flesh and milk sustain him and his family, and whose skins and wool provide his clothing.

This is now the pastoral or nomad stage.

Next comes the more settled form of life, when the cultivation of land and the production of the various kinds of cereals renders a permanent dwelling-place more or less necessary.

Property now consists not merely in slaves and domestic animals, but likewise in houses of improved construction, and large stores of grain. Man now possesses certain of the metals, gold and copper being the first to be known. How does he appraise these metals when he exchanges them with his neighbour? We shall find that he estimates them in terms of cattle, and that he at first barters them all by measures based on the parts of the human body, a method which continues to be employed for copper and iron long after the art of weighing has been invented; next he estimates his gold by certain natural units of capacity such as a goosequill, and finally fixes the amount of gold which is equivalent to a cow, by setting it in a rude balance against a certain number of natural seeds of plants. Such is the process which history tells us has taken place in the temperate regions of Asia and Europe, Africa and America. Just as it is impossible to learn the history of the growth of the earth's crust by confining our observations to one locality, and as the geologist only succeeds in gaining a true insight into the relations between the various strata by a study of the phenomena of many regions, so we shall only be able to comprehend properly the various stages in the growth of metallic currency and the origin of weight-standards by observing the facts revealed to us in various countries. Whilst in some places we shall meet with but one or two steps, in others we shall find traces of many, though often, broken strata. Like advance, however, seems impossible under the extremes of heat and cold. Hence in the latter regions the conditions of life remain almost unaltered. In the extreme north the rigour of an arctic winter forbids the keeping and rearing of domestic animals, or the cultivation of corn and vegetables. Hence the hunter form of existence remains almost unaltered. The sole or chief wealth of the people consists of the skins of the fur-bearing animals such as the seal, the beaver, the marten, or the fox, or stores of dried fish, which they exchange with traders for a few scant luxuries, or which form their own sustenance and protection against the pitiless frosts and snows.

In these regions therefore we find the skins of certain animals serving as units of account, in spite of the difference in value between those of different quality and rarity. In the Territory of the Hudson's Bay Company, even after the use of coined money had been introduced among the Indians, the skin was still in common use as the money of account. A gun nominally worth forty shillings brought twenty 'skins.' This term is the old one used by the Company. One skin is supposed to be worth two shillings, and it represents two martens and so on. "You heard a great deal about skins at Fort Yukon, as the workmen were also charged for clothing, etc., in this way." Similarly in the extreme north of Asia we find some Ostiak tribes using the skin of the Siberian squirrel as their unit of account.

Beyond all doubt the wampum belts of the North American Indians served the purpose of currency. They consisted of black and white shells rubbed down, polished and made into beads, and then strung into belts or necklaces, which were valued according to their length, colour and lustre, the black beads being the most valuable. Thus one foot of black peag was worth two feet of white peag. It was so well established as a currency among the natives that in 1649 the Court of Massachusetts ordered that it should be received as legal tender among the settlers in the payment of debts up to forty shillings.

Elsewhere the same writer observes: "Immense quantities of it were formerly in circulation among the Californian Indians, and the manufacture of it was large and constant to replace the continual wastage caused by the sacrifice of so much on the death of wealthy men, and by the propitiatory sacrifices performed by many tribes, especially those of the coast range. From my own observations, which have not been limited, and from the statements of pioneers and of the Indians themselves, I hesitate little to express the belief that every Indian in the state in early days possessed an average of at least 100 dollars worth of shell money. This would represent the value of almost two women , or two grizzly bear skins, or 25 cinnamon bear skins or about three average ponies. The young English-speaking Indians hardly use it at all except in a few dealings with their elders or for gambling. One sometimes lays away a few strings of it for he knows he cannot squander it at the stores. It is singular how old Indians cling to this currency when they know it will purchase nothing for them at the stores; but then their wants are few, and mostly supplied from the sources of nature, and besides that the money has a certain religious value in their eyes, as being alone worthy to be offered up on the funeral pile of departed friends or famous chiefs of their tribes."

Here we see how amongst the Indian tribes there was a fully developed system of inter-relations between the various objects which formed their wealth.

The horse was but a new comer into America, but he had his place soon allotted in the scale of values, being little less valuable than a squaw. We cannot doubt that if the Indian had succeeded in domesticating the buffalo before the advent of the white man, it would have formed the most general unit in use, as we shall find its congeners being employed in all parts of the old world. But before the coming of the Spaniards at least one race of North America had advanced a stage beyond shell money. The Aztecs of Mexico were employing a currency of gold and cacao seeds. The former in the shape of dust was placed in goose quills, which formed a natural unit of capacity, for weights were as yet unknown to the Aztecs; whilst the cacao seeds were placed in bags, each containing a specified number.

"First I proclaim this market on conditions of peace and lawful security between one and the other, so that each can entirely dispose of his own if he buy or if he sell. Price list in stockfish: of fish 2, 2 1/2 , or 1 3/4 lbs., 80 lbs. must be the equivalent of a hundred , provided the persons concerned cannot agree as to the price.

"I charge all, not only the people from the country, but also the inhabitants of these islands, that ye do in no way compass any disorder or disturbance to the strangers, from the moment the guard flag is hoisted, unless they themselves allow it.

"They, who here are annoyed by word or deed, have a right to demand double indemnity therefor.

"Also I charge, and the merchants in no way the least, that they use aright the "alen" and other lawful measure for everything, as the law demands, especially as regards butter, wine and beer, flour or malt, honey or tar, so that no one deals false or with deceit with another.

"He who does so intentionally shall have sinned as greatly against the state as if he had stolen goods of like value, whereas the bargain becomes void, and damages moreover must be given to him who was deceived.

"Let us now, Ye good men, eschew all malice and trickery, riot or disturbance, quarrels and careless words: but let every man be the other's friend, without deceit.

"Prizing unity And old custom, And abiding in God's peace."

Some such proclamations were probably often made in the marts of the Aegean, such as Aegina, when Greek, Phoenician and Etruscan met for traffic under the control of some local potentate, and the protection of the god of some neighbouring shrine.

On the borders of China and Tibet we may still find a state of things not far removed from that existing in the China of 2000 years ago. The Tibetans, who in recent years employ Indian rupees, for purposes of small change cut up these coins into little pieces, which are weighed by the careful Chinese, but the Tibetans do not seem to use the scale, and roughly judge of the value of a piece of silver. Tea, moreover, and beads of turquoise are largely used as a means of payment instead of metal.

Turning next to the southern frontier of China, we shall find among the tribes of Annam a system of currency which strongly reminds us of that found in the Homeric Poems.

From these extracts it is plain that the ancient Persians had a system of clearly defined relations in value between all their worldly gear, whether the object was a slave or an ox, or a lamb or a field, precisely like that existing at the present moment among the hill tribes of Annam. But not simply was it between one kind of animal and another, but they had evidently strict notions as regards the inter-relations in value of different animals of the same kind; thus the ox of high value, the ox of low value, the cow of three years old, or the bull all stood to one another in a fixed relationship. We may without hesitation conclude that the same system of conventional values prevailed among the ancient Hindus. Nor can we doubt that articles of every kind, such as arrows, spears, axes, and articles of personal use and adornment all had their regularly recognized prices, and that the less valuable of them were used as small change. Gold, no doubt, occupied an important place in relation to the other forms of property in portions of fixed size or weight, as in the days of Marco Polo. In mediaeval times in parts of India money consisted of pieces of iron worked into the form of large needles, and in some parts stones which we call cat's eyes, and in others pieces of gold worked to a certain weight were used for moneys, as we are told by Nicolo Conti, who travelled in India in the 15th century. If iron was so employed at this late date we may well infer that bronze and afterwards iron were probably so used by the ancient Indo-Iranian people.

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