+139. Taking up and dropping languages.+ The way in which languages are taken up or dropped is also perplexing. Keane[268] gives a list of peoples who have dropped one language and taken up another; he also gives a list of those who have changed physical type but have retained the same language. Holub[269] mentions the Makololo, who have almost entirely disappeared, but their language has passed to their conquerors. It became necessary to the latter from the spread of their dominion and from their closer intercourse with the peoples south of the Zambesi, on account of which, "without any intentional interference by the rulers, a common and easily understood language showed itself indispensable." Almost every village in New Guinea has its own language, and it is said that in New Britain people who live thirty miles apart cannot understand each other.[270]

+140. Pigeon dialects.+ The Germans find themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with aborigines because they have no dialect like pigeon English or the Coast Malay used by the Dutch.[271] Many examples are given, from the Baltic region, of peasant dialects made in sport by subjecting all words to the same modification.[272] Our own children often do this to English in order to make a secret language.

+141. How languages grow.+ What we see in these cases is that, if we suppose men to have joined in cooperative effort with only the sounds used by apes and monkeys, the requirement of their interests would push them on to develop languages such as we now know. The isolating, agglutinative, incorporative, and inflectional languages can be put in a series according to the convenience and correctness of the logical processes which they embody and teach. The Semitic languages evidently teach a logic different from that of the Indo-European. It is a different way of thinking which is inculcated in each great family of languages. They represent stages in the evolution of thought or ways of thinking. The instance is one of those which best show us how folkways are built up and how they are pulled down. The agglutination of words and forms sometimes seems like a steady building process; again, the process will not go forward at all. "In the agglutinative languages speech is berry jam. In the inflectional languages each word is like a soldier in his place with his outfit."[273] The "gooing" of a baby is a case of the poetic power in its blossoming exuberance. The accidental errors of pronunciation which are due to very slight individual variations in the form of the vocal organs are cases of individual contribution to the development of language. The baby words and individual mispronunciations which are taken up by a family and its friends, but never get further, show us how dialects grow. There are changes in language which are, "in their inception, inaccuracies of speech. They attest the influence of that immense numerical majority among the speakers of English who do not take sufficient pains to speak correctly, but whose blunders become finally the norm of the language."[274] In analogy things which are alike are embraced in a single term; in metaphor two or more things which seem alike, but may not be so, are grouped together and are embraced in a single term. All these modes of change in language attest the work of individuals on language. Sometimes there is extension of influence to a group.

Sometimes the influence is only temporary and is rejected again.

Sometimes it falls in with a drift of taste or habit, when it is taken up and colors the pronunciation or usage of the population of a great district, and becomes fixed in the language. All this is true also on the negative side, since usage of words, accent, timbre of the voice, and pronunciation (drawling, nasal tones) expel older usages. Language therefore illustrates well all the great changes of folkways under the heads of cooperation and antagonism. We have an excellent chance to study the operation in the case of slang. A people who are prosperous and happy, optimistic and progressive, will produce much slang. It is a case of play. They amuse themselves with the language. We may think the new words and phrases vulgar and in bad taste, or senseless and ridiculous. We may reject them, but the masses will decide whether they shall be permanently rejected or not. The vote is informal. The most confirmed purist will by and by utter a new slang word when he needs it.

One's objections are broken down. One's taste is spoiled by what he hears. We are right in the midst of the operation of making folkways and can perceive it close at hand.

+142. Money.+ Money is another primitive device which is produced in the folkways. Money was not called into existence by any need universally experienced and which all tried to satisfy as well as they could. It was produced by developing other devices, due to other motives, until money was reached as a result. Property can be traced to portable objects which were amulets, trophies, and ornaments all at once. These could be accumulated, and if they were thought to be the abodes of powerful spirits, they were gifts which were eagerly sought, or valuable objects for exchange. They led to hoarding (since the owner did not like to part with them), and they served as marks of personal distinction.[275] The interplay of vanity and religion with the love of property demands attention. Religion also caused the aborigines of the northwest provinces of South America to go to the rivers for gold only in sufficient amount to buy what they needed. Any surplus they returned to the stream. "They say that if they borrow more than they really need the river-god will not lend them any more."[276] In later times and higher civilization coins have been used as amulets to ward off or to cure disease.[277] The Greenland Eskimo laughed when they were offered gold and silver coins. They wanted objects of steel, for which they would give anything which they had and which was desired.[278] The Tarahumari of Sonora do not care for silver money. Their Croesus raises three hundred or four hundred bushels of corn per annum. The largest herd of cattle contains thirty or forty head. They generally prefer cotton cloth to dollars.[279] "A Dyak has no conception of the use of a circulating medium. He may be seen wandering in the Bazaar with a ball of bee's wax in his hand for days together, because he cannot find anybody willing to take it for the exact article which he requires."[280] We meet with a case in which people have gold but live on a system of barter. It is a people in Laos, north of Siam. They weigh gold alone in scales against seeds of grain.[281] In the British Museum (Case F, Ireland) may be seen bronze rings, to be sewn on garments as armor or to be used as money, or both. The people along the west coast of Hindostan, from the Persian Gulf to Ceylon, used as money the fishhook which was their most important tool. It became degraded into a piece of doubled wire of silver or bronze. If the degradation had gone on, doubtless it would have resulted in a lump of metal, just as the Siamese silver coins are the result of doubling up silver rings.[282]

The play of custom and convention is well shown by the use of the Macedonian coins in England. The coins of Philip bore on the obverse a head with a wreath, and on the reverse a chariot driver drawn by two horses. In Britain this coin became a sign of value and lost its reference to the sovereign. It is possible to show the order of the reigns of the kings by the successive omissions of parts of the figures, until only the wreath was left and four perpendicular strokes and two circles for the legs of one horse and two chariot wheels. Each change was a mark of value and then it was further changed to save trouble.[283] On the Palau Islands there were seven grades of money, determined by the size. Only three or four pieces exist of the first grade. The second grade is of jasper. The third consists of agate cylinders. These three grades are used only by nobles. They have the same rank as gems amongst us. The people think of the money as coming from an island where it lives a divine life, the lower ranks serving the upper. They have myths of the coming of the money to Palau.[284] These examples show to what a great extent other ideas than those of value come into play in money.

+143. Intergroup and intragroup money.+ When money is used to overcome the difficulties of barter two cases are to be distinguished,--the intergroup and the intragroup uses, which are primarily distinguished by a space relation. The intragroup use is here, in the we-group, close at hand. The intergroup use is between our group and some out-group. It will be found that all money problems include these two cases. "At least we shall find that the current commonplace of the economists about the succession of natural economy, money economy, and credit economy, is not even remotely apt to the real problems."[285] What is true is that, on a money economy, it is found that there is, or may be, a constant exchange of money for goods and goods for money, from which gain or loss may result; and furthermore that the risk (aleatory element) in this exchange is intensified, if time is allowed to intervene. Inside the we-group the first need for money is for fees, fines, amercements, and bride price. In Melanesia pigs are not called money and there is shell, feather, and mat money, but pigs are paid for fines, penalties, contributions to feasts, fees in the secret society, pay for wives, and in other societal relations. What is needed is a mobile form of wealth, with which social dues can be paid. This is the function of money which the paper-money projectors have in mind when they propose to issue paper which the state shall take for taxes. It is evident that it is to be distinguished from the economic function of money as a circulating medium. The intragroup money needs to be especially a measure and store of value, while the intergroup money needs to be a medium of exchange.

In the former case barter is easy; in the latter case it is regular. In the former case a multiple standard is available; in the latter case what is needed to discharge balances is a commodity of universal demand.

When credit is introduced its sphere is intragroup. The debtors would like the money to be what every one can get. The creditors would like it to be what every one wants.

+144. Various predominant wares.+ In the northeastern horn of Africa the units of value which are used as money are salt, metal, skins, cotton, glass, tobacco, wax, coffee beans, and korarima. Cattle and slaves are also used as units of value from time to time amongst the Oromo. Salt is used as money in prismatic pieces, twenty-two centimeters long and three centimeters to five millimeters broad at the bottom, which weigh from seven hundred and fifty grams to one and one half kilograms each. It is carried in bundles of twenty to thirty pieces, wound in leaves.[286] The Galla use rods of iron six to twelve centimeters long, somewhat thicker in the middle, well available for lance ends, one hundred and thirty of which are worth one thaler in Schoa; also pieces of copper, tin, and zinc; calf-skins; black, printed, and unprinted cotton cloth; pieces of cloth; coarse red cotton yarn (for knitting); and strings of beads. The universal and intergroup money is the Maria Theresa thaler weighing 571.5 to 576 English grains.[287] Cameron mentions the exchange of intergroup money for intragroup money at a fair at Kawile, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. At the opening of the fair the money changers gave out the local money of bugle beads, which they took in again when the fair closed.[288] On the French Congo the boatmen were paid with paper bons, which were superseded by metal ones in 1887. When the recipient takes his bon to the station he obtains at first a number of nails, beads, or other articles for it, which he can then exchange for what he wants. Tokens of copper are issued at Franceville, stamped "F," of different shapes and sizes, but always of the same shape and size for the same value in French money.[289] At Grand Bassam in West Africa the manilla (bracelet) serves as money. For six months the natives give oil for these bracelets of metal mixed of copper, lead, zinc, antimony, and iron, which can be closed around the arm or leg of a slave by a blow of the hammer. Then for six months they exchange the bracelets for the European goods which they want.[290] These bracelets were a store of wealth for the black men.[291] The Kru have few cattle, which pass from one to another in bride purchases, since these can be made with nothing else. It is impossible to have wives and cattle too until one's daughters grow up.[292] Since the seventeenth century cylindrical (bugle) green-blue beads have been money on the ivory and gold coasts. They come from an ancient cemetery on the Bokabo Mountains and are of Egyptian origin. They were buried with the dead.[293] A local money of stone is reported also from Avetime in Ehveland. It is said to have been used as ornament. Pieces of quartz and sandstone, rudely square but with broken corners, from four to five centimeters in diameter and one and a half to two centimeters thick, rubbed down by friction, have been found.[294]

+145. Intragroup money from property; intergroup money from trade.+ These cases already show us the distinction between intragroup money and intergroup money. The effect of trade is to develop one or more predominant wares. In the intragroup exchanges this is an object of high desire to individuals for use. It may be an amulet ornament, or a thing of great use in the struggle for existence, e.g. cattle, or a thing of universal acceptance by which anything can be obtained. In intergroup trade it is the chief object of export, the thing for which the trade is carried on, e.g. salt, metal, fur. If this commodity is not easily divisible, the money is something which can be given "to boot," e.g.

tobacco, sugar, opium, tea, betel.[295] That is money which will "pass."

This does not mean that which can be forced to pass ("legal tender"), but that which will go without force. Amulet ornaments may be either a whim which does not take, or fashion may seize upon something of this kind and make it a tribe mark. Then it becomes group money, because it is universally desired. The articles admit of accumulation, and ostentation is a new joy; they also admit of change and variety. They are available for gifts to the medicine man (to satisfy ghosts, get rain, or thwart disease). They may be used to buy a wife, or to buy a step in the secret society of the men, or to pay a fine or penalty to the chief. The differentiation of goods starts emotion on the line of least resistance, and the predominant goods are the ones of widest demand. Often the predominant ware has a gain from taboo, probably on account of relation to the dead.[296] A thing which is rare and hard to get may become intragroup money. In Fiji the teeth of the spermaceti whale are taken as a measure of value and sign of peace. In German New Guinea the bent tusks of a boar are used as money. In California red birds' heads are used in the same way. Trophy skulls of birds and beasts become a store of wealth, and money with which trade can be carried on with neighbors.[297] The first step seems to be to use the predominant article as the third term of reference in barter. Intergroup money is really a ware and so remains, as gold is now; but groups widen as communication improves, and group money gets a very wide range. In intergroup affairs, therefore, the relations sooner become impersonal and mechanical. The things which are best for this purpose become mobile. Some are better as stores of value, others as means of power, others as measures of value. The last are on the way to become money.

The others are more like gems. Thus group money arose from property; intergroup money from trade.

+146. Shell and beads.+ Shells had very great convenience for money and their value was increased by the fact that ghosts dwelt in them. Cowries were early used as money, 2200 of them equaling in value one franc.[298] They are now losing currency. On Fernando Po bits of achatectonia shells are made into belts and used as currency.[299] A far less widespread shell of a sea snail was used in northern Transvaal.[300] Other cases of the use of shells will be given below. A dress pattern of cotton cloth, seven ells, called a "tobe," is a unit of monetary reference through the Sudan.[301] Another money in the same region is the iron spade, with which tribute is paid to the petty rulers of eastern Equatoria. The spades are made of native iron and are used upon occasion to cut down the grass.[302] Expeditions into the Niam Niam territories always have a smith with them whose duty it is to make rings of copper and iron wire, with a square section, for minor purchases.[303] The currency of beads has greatly lessened wherever more useful objects of European manufacture have become known.[304] Forms of the lance head are used to buy a wife, who costs twenty or thirty of them.[305]

Further south von Gotzen found brass wire, in pieces fifteen to thirty-five centimeters long, in use as money, not being an article of use, but a real money used to store value, to buy what is wanted, and to pay taxes for protection against one's forest neighbors.[306] Formerly, when beads were still used as money, each district had its own preferred size, shape, and color.

Travelers found that the fashion in a district had changed since the information was obtained, relying on which they had provided themselves. This is, however, evidently a part of the operation of differentiating the predominant ware.[307]

+147. Token money.+ Token money demands treatment by itself, as a special development of the money-producing movement. If different groups adopt different kinds of amulet ornaments as money, such intragroup money may be token money. If one such group conquers another, the conquerors may throw the money of the conquered out of use (whites and Indians as to wampum). In Burma Chinese gambling counters are used as money.[308] Guttapercha tokens issued by street-car companies in South America are said to be used in the same way. Postage stamps, milk tickets, etc., have been so used by us. In Massachusetts, in the eighteenth century, pieces of paper were circulated which had no redemption whatever. They bore the names of coins of silver which did not exist, but which had a definition in a certain amount of silver of a certain fineness. At Carthage pieces of leather which inclosed an unknown object, probably one of the holy moneys, were circulated.[309]

The same is reported of bits of leather cut, like samples, from a skin and circulated in place of it. The device succeeded for the in-group money, but it led to the attempt to put copper tokens in the place of silver coins, which resulted in disaster.[310] The cacao beans of Mexico were wares, if of good quality. Larger ones of poorer quality were money. A part of the value was imaginary. Cloth was formerly money in Bohemia. A loosely woven variety of cloth was used for this purpose, the cloth utilities as a textile fabric and as money being separated. On the west coast of Africa little mats were used as money. They were stamped by the Portuguese government. Mat money was also used on the New Hebrides, especially to buy grades in the great secret society. The mats are long and narrow and are more esteemed when they are old and black from the smoke of the huts. They are kept in little houses where they are smoked. "When they hang with soot they are particularly valued."[311] Useless broken rice is used as money in Burma and elsewhere in the East.[312] The use of token money, in which a part of the value is imaginary, always implies the inclosure of a group and the exclusion of foreign trade. Then, within the group, the value may be said to be real and not imaginary. It depends on the monopoly law of value and varies with the quantity but not proportionately to the quantity. Kublai-Khan, using a Chinese device, got possession of all the gold and silver and issued paper. His empire was so great that all trade was intragroup trade, and his power made his paper money pass.[313]

The Andamanese made inferior pots to be used as a medium in barter.[314]

They have very little trade; are on a stage of mutual gift making.[315]

Token money is an aberration of the folkways, due to misapprehension of the peculiarity of group money. At the same time it has been used with advantage for subsidiary silver coinage.

+148. Selection of a predominant ware.+ Crawfurd, in his history of the Indian Archipelago, mentions a number of different articles used there as money,--cakes of beeswax, salt, gold dust, cattle, and tin.[316] The tin coins are small irregular laminae with a hole in the center, 5600 of them being worth a dollar.

Brass coins which come down from the Buddhist sovereigns of Java are still met with; also other brass coins introduced by the Mohammedan sovereigns. In the museum at Vienna copper rings, bound into a circle, inclosed in a fibrous envelope, are another form of money. The selection of a predominant ware is shown in such cases as the one described in Ling Roth.[317] When Low was at Kiau, in 1851, beads and brass wire were wanted. When others were there some years later the people all had their hearts set on brass wire. The Englishmen "distributed a good deal of cloth, at reasonable rates, in exchange for food and services rendered."

In 1858 they found that even brass wire, unless of very great size, was despised, and cloth was eagerly desired.

One thing which helped the selection of a predominant ware was that only a specified article would make peace, atone for a wrong, compose a quarrel, or ransom a captive. Also various articles obtained such prestige, on account of age and the glory of ancestors, that the possession of them conferred authority and social importance on their owners. Such are porcelain jars in Borneo, bronze drums in Burma, bronze cannon in the East-Indian Archipelago. Many African chiefs stored up ivory tusks for social prestige long before the white men came and gave them value in world commerce.[318]

+149. Stone money in Melanesia.+ We must, however, turn our attention to Melanesia where the shell and stone money have been pushed to a most remarkable development, quite out of line with the rest of the Melanesian civilization. On the Solomon Islands there are some petty reef communities which occupy themselves solely with fishing and making shell-bead money.[319] On New Britain divarra is made by boring and stringing fathoms of shell money. A fathom is worth two shillings sterling, and two hundred and fifty fathoms coiled up together looks like a life buoy.[320]

In the northwestern Solomon Islands the currency consists of beasts' teeth of two kinds,--those of a kind of flying dog and of a kind of dolphin. Each tooth is bored at the root and they are strung on thin cords. These people also use the small disks of shell, five millimeters in diameter and from one to one and a half millimeters thick.[321] The shell money of New Britain has very great influence on the lives of the people. It minimizes the evil and fatality of war, in which every life and every wound must be paid for. It establishes the right of property. It makes the people frugal and industrious, and makes them a commercial people. To it may also be attributed their selfishness and ingratitude. "Its influence is supposed to extend even to the next life. There is not a custom connected with life or death in which this money does not play a great and leading part.... Take away their money and their secret societies sink at once into nothing, and most of their customs become nothing."[322]

Evidently the missionary testifies that the money stimulates commercialism with all its good and ill. Coils of feathers which are spoken of as money are also reported from the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz. Feathers are attached with resin to the outside of coils, inside of which are charms, each possessing a protective property. This money is very rare and, if shown, may be handled only by the owner.[323] Our information as to the commercial uses and effects of these island shell moneys is very imperfect. The money seems to be still on the stage of gems. It is used to buy steps of rank in the secret society, which cost pigs and money and mark social importance, which is, like other forms of force, regarded as supernatural. Rank can be gained only by the consent of those who already have it.[324]

+150. Plutocratic effects of money.+ It must not be understood that the money, on the barbaric stage, enters into the struggle for existence, at least for food. There is only slight organization of labor. Each one produces what he needs. There is little luxury. "Nevertheless, money plays the chief role in the life of the people. The man, regarded as an animal, has enough to do to support life. If he wants a wife, wants to found a family, wants to be a member of the state, he must have money."[325] It is evident that the circulation of this money must produce phenomena which are unfamiliar to us.

The estimate placed by the Solomon Islanders on great stones of aragonite, obtained in the southern Palau islands, is such that they incur great risks in going to get them in their frail boats.[326] The pieces have the appearance of our own grindstones. They are set in rows by the men's clubhouses, and are in care of the chiefs. Christian mentions two of the Big Houses on Yap with stone money piled against the foundations. One piece was twelve feet in diameter and one and a half feet thick, and had a hole in the center two and a half feet in diameter.[327] A certain Captain O'Keefe, in 1882, fitted out a Chinese vessel and brought thousands of pieces of money from Palau to Yap. He brought the whole island in debt to himself.

Nowadays they want big stones. Such six feet in diameter are not rare. This kind of money is the money of the men; that of the women is of mussel shells strung on strings. The exchange of a big piece for smaller kinds of money involves considerations of rank. Two of equal rank, and well disposed, exchange by dignity; if one is inferior, the good will of the other is requisite. The glass and porcelain money on Yap must have come from China or Japan. It has controlled the social development of the islands.

It is also noticeable that other things of high utility, e.g. the wooden vessels in which yellow powder is prepared, or in which food is set forth at feasts, are made the objects of exchange, and, at the making of peace after a fight, or at other negotiations, affect the relations of tribes.[328] At the present time bags of dried cocoanut are employed as a medium of exchange, probably in intergroup trade.[329] What Kubary[330] says about the use of the money shows that it has no proper circulation. It accumulates in the hands of the great men, since it is used to pay fees, fines, gifts, tribute, etc. The armengol women, marriages, and public festivals start it out again, and on its way back it performs many social services. It is also reasonable to suppose that, having got a footing on these islands, it spread to others by social contagion. This explains the presence of a general medium of exchange amongst people who are otherwise barely out of the stone age.[331] The tales about the crimes which have been connected with the history of great pieces of the aragonite stone[332] remind us of the stories about the greatest diamonds yet found.

+151. Money in northwestern North America.+ In South America nothing served the purposes of money. There was none in Peru.

Metal, if they had any, was used by all for ornament.[333]

Martius, however, says of the Mauhes that they used seeds of _paullinia sorbilis_ as money. They obtained from the seeds a remedy for skin disease and diarrhoea.[334] The Nishinam of California had two kinds of shell money, ullo and hawok. The former consists of pieces, one or two inches long and one third of that in width, strung on a fiber. The pieces of shell take a high polish and make a fine necklace. The hawok is small money by comparison. A string of the large kind was worth ten dollars. It consisted of ten pieces. A string of one hundred and seventy-seven pieces of the small kind sold for seven dollars. In early days every Indian in California had, on an average, one hundred dollars' worth of the shell money, the value of two women (although they did not buy wives) or three average ponies.[335]

The Hupa of California will not sell to an American the flakes of jasper or obsidian which they parade at their dances. They are not knives, but jewelry and money amongst themselves. Nearly every man has ten lines tattooed across the inside of his left arm. A string of five shells is the standard unit. It is drawn over the left thumb nail. If it reaches the uppermost tattooed line it is worth five dollars per shell.[336] They also grind down pieces of stone which looks like meershaum into cylinders one to three inches long, which they wear as jewelry and use as money.[337] The Eskimo of Alaska used skins as money. Here the effect of intergroup trade has been to change the skin which was taken as the unit. It is now the beaver. Other skins are rated as multiples or submultiples of this.[338] In Washington Territory dentalium and abelone shells were the money, also slaves, skins, and blankets, until the closer contact with whites produced changes.[339] The Karok use as money the red scalps of woodpeckers which are rated at from $2.50 to $5.00 each, and also dentalium shells of which they grind off the tip. The shortest pieces are worth twenty-five cents, the longest about two dollars. The strings are generally about the length of a man's arm. They were worth forty or fifty dollars a string, but have fallen in value, especially amongst the young.[340] The copper plates which are so highly valued on the northwestern coast may be esteemed holy on account of the ring in them. Slaves are killed and their flesh is used as bait in catching the dentalium snails, perhaps in order to get a mystic idea into the shells of the snails.[341]

+152. Wampumpeag and roanoke.+ On the Atlantic coast shell money was made on Long Island Sound and at Narragansett from the shell of the round clam, in two colors, white and purple, the latter from the dark spot in the shell. These were bugles, the hole running in the thickness of the shell. They were called wampumpeag, were sewed on deer or other fine skins, and the belts thus made were used to emphasize points in negotiation or in treaties, or in speeches. Farther down the coast beads were made like flat button molds, with holes bored through them perpendicularly to the plane of the shell, and called roanoke.

These beads, of both kinds, but especially of the former kind, spread by exchange into the Mississippi Valley, and in the middle of the nineteenth century they had reached the upper waters of the Missouri River.

+153. Ring money; use of metal.+ The standpoint of the Vedic hymns is that the cow is the real measure of value, but metal, especially gold, is used for money in the payment of penalties and weregild. The objects at stake in formulae of oaths and of duels were estimated in gold.[342] There was therefore a pure gold currency. In ancient India, however, silver and copper were also used and locally some coins of lead and mixed metals occurred. In value one of gold equaled ten of silver, and one of silver forty of copper.[343] The most ancient money of China consisted of shells,[344] also of knives and dress patterns of silk.[345] The knives had rings at the end of the handle and were gradually reduced to rings of metal as money.[346] The same ancient king who established measures of length and capacity is the legendary author of money (2697 B.C.). He fixed the five objects of exchange,--beads, jade, gold, knives, textiles. The sign for money was combined of the signs for "shell" and "to exchange."[347] We hear that the Chinese emperor, 119 B.C., gave to his vassals squares of white deerskin, about one foot on a side, embroidered on the hem. He who had one of these could get an audience of the emperor.[348] We are inclined to connect with that usage the use of a scarf of bluish-white silk in central Asia, which was used in all greetings and ceremonies. A certain quality of this scarf was used in places as the unit of value.[349] Przewalsky mentions the chadak which is given to every guest in southern Mongolia, for which another must be given in return. In Chalcha chadaks are used as money, not as gifts.[350] An intragroup money of copper or brass rings is also reported from Korintji on Sumatra. They are cast of three sizes, so that one hundred and twenty, three hundred and sixty, and four hundred and eighty are required to equal a Dutch gulden.[351] In the Old Testament the bride price and penalties were to be paid in money.[352] Gifts and fees to the sanctuary were to be paid in kind.[353] If the sacrificer wished to redeem his animal, etc., he must pay twenty per cent more than the priest's assessment of it.[354] Until the Exile the precious metals were paid by weight.[355] The rings represented on the Egyptian monuments were of wire with a round section. Those found by Schliemann at Mykenae are similar, or they are spirals of wire.[356] In Homer cattle are the unit of value, but metals are used as media. The talent is mentioned only in reference to gold.[357] Possibly Schurz is right in supposing that fluctuations in the value of cattle and sheep forced the classical nations to use metal.[358] The metals were in the shape of caldrons or tripods, in which fines were imposed. They may have been accumulated because used as money, or a great man who had many clients may have needed many for meals.[359] "The transition from the old simple mode of exchange to the use of currency can nowhere be better traced than amongst the Romans." Fines were set in cattle or sheep, but copper was used as well, weighed when sold. Then the state set the shape and fineness of the bars and stamped them with the mark of a sheep or ox. Later the copper was marked to indicate its value, and so money was reached.[360] Amongst Germans and Scandinavians the cow was the primitive unit of value.[361] It was superseded by metals used in rings to make out the fractions.[362]

+154. The evolution of money.+ It is evident that money was developed out of trade by instinctive operations of interest, and that money existed long before the idea of it was formed. The separate operations were stimulated only by the most immediate and superficial desires, but they set supply and demand in motion and produced economic value thousands of years before any man conceived of value. The rational analysis of value and money is not yet satisfactorily made. There are, therefore, points of view in which money is the most marvelous product of the folkways. The unconsciousness of the operation and the secondary results of it are here in the strongest contrast. Inside of the we-group useful property was shared or exchanged in an infinite variety of ways, according to variations of circumstances. We cannot follow the customs which thence arose, because the phenomena have been reported to us without distinction between intragroup and intergroup transactions. We see groups of predominant wares set out in intergroup trade, and only slowly is a smaller number segregated to be the general terms of every trade. The inconvenience of barter was only slowly felt, and could not have been a motive until trade was customary and familiar. In intragroup exchanges the predominant ware was more easily differentiated. It was the thing greatly desired. Here the amulet-trophy-ornament was important for the elements of superstition, vanity, and magic which it bore. In intergroup trade the utility of the object predominated. It was sought in journeys only for its utility, and in that trade the transactions first became impersonal. In the selection of leading wares individuals could not experiment for their own risk. By taking what each wanted at a time selection at last resulted, and when we are told that a certain group uses this or that group of articles for money, we are told only what articles predominate in their desires or transactions; in other words, what stage in the selection of a money they have reached. It is evident that this entire operation was an impersonal and unregulated play of custom, which went through a long and varying evolution, but kept its authority all the time and at every stage. The persistence of the word "shilling" in our language is a striking proof of the power of custom--above all, popular custom--in connection with money. The metric system was invented to be a rational system, but the populace has insisted on dividing kilograms and liters into halves and quarters.

Language, money, and weights and measures are things which show the power of popular custom more than any others. The selection of predominant wares reached its acme in the selection of _one_, not necessarily the commodity most desired, but, after the function of money is perceived, the one which performs it best. To return and take up a greater number is to go backward on the path of civilization.

+155. The ethical functions of money.+ From shells to gold the ethics of social relations has clung to money. There is more pure plutocracy in Melanesia than in New York. The differentiation of men by wealth is greatly aided by money, because money adds immensely to the mobility of wealth and lets all forces reach their full effect in transactions. The social effect of debt is best seen in barbarous societies which have money. Debt and war together made slavery.[363] It is, however, an entire mistake to regard a money-system as in itself a mischief-working system. The effect of money is exhausted when we notice that it makes wealth mobile and lets forces work out their full result by removing friction. So soon as there is a money there is a chance for exchanges of money for goods and goods for money, also for the loan and repayment of money at different times, under which transactions interests may change and speculation can arise. These facts have always interested the ethical philosophers. "Naught hath grown current amongst mankind so mischievous as money. This brings cities to their fall. This drives men homeless, and moves honest minds to base contrivings. This hath taught mankind the use of villainies, and how to give an impious turn to every kind of act."[364] In such diatribes "money" stands for wealth in general. Money, properly speaking, has no more character than axes of stone, bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves any mark on it. The Solomon Islanders are expert merchants and "are fully the equal of white men in cheating."[365] They do it with shell money as whites do it with gold, silver, and banknotes. That is to say, the "money" is indifferent because it has no ethical function at all and absolutely no character.

+156.+ There are other topics which might be brought under the struggle for existence as a cluster of folkways, with great advantage. The struggle for existence takes on many different forms and produces phenomena which are cases of folkways. It speedily develops industrial organization, which, in one point of view, is only the interaction of folkways. Weights and measures, the measurement of time, the communication of intelligence, and trade are primary folkways in their earliest forms and deserve careful study as such.

[165] Smyth, _Aborig. of Victoria_, I, 194, 197.

[166] Mason, _Origin of Invention_, 252.

[167] Tylor, _Anthrop._, 208.

[168] Powers, _California Indians_, 50.

[169] Lumholtz, _Scribner's_, October, 1894, 448.

[170] Von den Steinen, _Berl. Mus._, 1888, 205.

[171] Southey, _Brazil_, I, 131.

[172] E.g. a rasp made from the skin of the palate of a kind of ray, by Tahitians, Vienna Museum.

[173] Mason, _Origin of Invention_, 23.

[174] Grinnell, _Folk Tales_, 295.

[175] Dall, _Bur. Eth._, III, 122.

[176] Ratzel, _Volkerkunde_, II, 52.

[177] Smyth, _Aborig. of Victoria_, I, 202.

[178] _N. S. Amer. Anthrop._, II, 466.

[179] _U. S. Nat. Mus._, 1890, 471.

[180] Ratzel, _Volkerkunde_, II, 163.

[181] Smithson, _Contrib. to Knowledge_, XXV; Rau, _Prehist.