David Ames Wells - Robinson Crusoe's Money

The origin of this little book is as follows: Some months ago, the expediency was suggested to the author, by certain prominent friends of hard money in this country, of preparing for popular reading—and possibly for political campaign purposes—a little tract, or essay, in which the elementary principles underlying the important subjects of money and currency should be presented and illustrated from the simplest A B C stand-point. That such a work was desirable, and that none of the very great number of speeches and essays already published on these topics in all respects answered the existing requirement, was admitted; but how to invest subjects, so often discussed, and so commonly regarded as dry and abstract, with sufficient new interest to render them at once attractive and intelligible to those whose tastes disincline them to close reasoning and investigation, was a matter not easy to determine.

At last the old idea—recognized in fables, allegories, and parables—of making a story the medium for communicating instruction, suggested itself; and, in accordance with the suggestion, a remote island community has been imagined, in which, starting from conditions but one remove from barbarism, but gradually rising to a high degree of civilization, the progress, the use, and the abuse of the instrumentalities and mechanism of exchange—through barter, money, and currency—have been traced consecutively; and the effect of the application of not a few of the most popular fiscal recommendations and theories of the day practically worked out and recorded. And, in carrying out this scheme, the reader will not fail to perceive, by reference to the marginal notes accompanying the text, that hardly an absurdity in reference to exchange, money, or currency can be imagined, which somewhere and at some time has not had its exact counterpart in actual history or experience.

If any apology for the objects designed or the course pursued is needed, the author thinks he finds it in the precedent established by the illustrious Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., who, in the introduction to his “Tales of a Traveler,” thus happily sets forth the special advantage which accrues from the proper employment of a story as a means of communicating information. “I am not,” he says, “for those barefaced tales which carry their moral on their surface, staring one in the face; on the contrary, I have often hid my moral from sight, and disguised it as much as possible by sweets and spices; so that while the simple reader is listening with open mouth to a ghost or love story, he may have a bolus of sound morality popped down his throat, and be never the wiser for the fraud.”

Whether in “Robinson Crusoe’s Money” the author shall succeed in inducing his fellow-countrymen—to whom the ordinary currency medicine is becoming distasteful—to swallow without wry faces the same dose sugar-coated, remains to be determined.

All who have read “Robinson Crusoe” (and who has not?) will remember the circumstance of his opening, some time after he had become domiciled on his desolate island, one of the chests that had come to him from the ship. In it he found pins, needles and thread, a pair of large scissors, “ten or a dozen good knives,” some cloth, about a dozen and a half of white linen handkerchiefs concerning which he remarks, “They were exceedingly refreshing to wipe my face on a warm day;” and, finally, hidden away in the till of the chest, “ three great bags of money —gold as well as silver.”

The finding of all these articles—the money excepted—it will be further remembered, greatly delighted the heart of Crusoe; inasmuch as they increased his store of useful things, and therefore increased his comfort and happiness. But in respect to the money the case was entirely different. It was a thing to him, under the circumstances, absolutely worthless, and over its presence and finding he soliloquized as follows: “I smiled at myself at the sight of all this money. ‘Oh, drug!’ said I, aloud, ‘what art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me, no, not the taking off the ground. One of these knives is worth all this heap. Nay, I would give it all for a gross of tobacco-pipes; for sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrot seed from England; or for a handful of pease and beans, and a bottle of ink.’”

In introducing this episode in the life of his hero, nothing was probably further from the thought of the author, De Foe, than the intent to give his readers a lesson in political economy. And yet it would be difficult to find an illustration which conveys in so simple a manner to him who reflects upon it so much of information in respect to the nature of that which is popularly termed “ wealth ;” or so good a basis for reasoning correctly in respect to the origin and function of that which we call “ money .” And in such reasoning, the truth of the following propositions is too evident to require demonstration:

1st. The pins and needles, the scissors, knives, and cloth were of great utility to Robinson Crusoe, because their possession satisfied a great desire on his part to have them, and greatly increased his comfort and happiness.

2d. Possessing utility, they nevertheless possessed no exchangeable value , because they could not be bought or sold, or, what is the same thing, exchanged with any body for any thing.

3d. They had, moreover, no price , for they had no purchasing power which could be expressed as money.

4th. The money, which is popularly regarded as the symbol and the concentration of all wealth, had, under the circumstances, neither utility, value, nor price. It could not be eaten, drunk, worn, used as a tool, or exchanged with any body for any thing, and fully merited the appellation which Crusoe in another place gives it, of “ sorry, worthless stuff .”

Finally, the pins, needles, knives, cloth, and scissors were all capital to Robinson Crusoe, because they were all instrumentalities capable of being used to produce something additional, to him useful or desirable. The money was not capital , under the circumstances, because it could not be used to produce any thing.

Starting, then, with a condition of things on the island in which money had clearly neither utility nor value, let us next consider under what change of domestic circumstances it could become useful, acquire value, become an object of exchange, and constitute a standard for establishing prices.

The first person that came to join Robinson Crusoe on his island was Friday, and next, Friday’s father. But even with this increase of numbers there was still no use for the money, inasmuch as the three constituted but one family, the members of which labored and shared all useful things they acquired in common, and made no exchanges. But when Will Atkins and the English sailors came, and the population of the island, we may suppose, was largely and permanently increased, a new social order of things became inevitable. Incompatibility of taste and temper, and a natural desire for personal independence, soon made it impossible for all to live and share in common as one family. And self-interest also soon taught, that, in order that the quantity of useful things available for the new community as a whole might be increased, and their quality perfected, it was desirable, that, instead of each man endeavoring to supply all his own wants, and for this purpose following irregularly the business of a carpenter, baker, tailor, mason, and the like, it was best for each man to pursue but one occupation, and, making himself skilled in it, procure the things which he himself did not produce, and which he might need, by exchanging his own products or services for the products or services of some other man.