At Moko and Utuan they use another kind of money as well as this, the other being a little bivalve shell, through which they bore a hole and string it on pieces of native-made twine. It is also chipped all round until it is a quarter of an inch in diameter and then smoothed down into even discs with sand and pumice. Here we find strings of shells, which undoubtedly in the first instance were used for personal adornment, converted into a true currency. The simple savages, whose possessions were exceedingly few and scanty, equated their fish to strings of shells which formed their only ornament, and when they got a more valuable possession in the pig, they quickly learned to appraise that animal in shell worth, just as the North American Indians learned to estimate the horse in Wampum.

Instead of shells the natives of Fiji are said to have employed whales' teeth as currency, red teeth (which are still highly prized) standing to white ones somewhat in the ratio of sovereigns to shillings with us.

Passing on to the mainland of Asia we shall find that the Chinese, who in the course of ages have developed a bronze coinage of their own apart from the influences of the Mediterranean people, had in early times an elaborate system of shell money. Cowries appear in the Ya-King, the oldest Chinese book, 100,000 dead shellfishes being an equivalent for riches. Tortoise of various kinds and sizes was used for the greater values which would have required too many cowries. Tortoise shell is still elegantly used to express coin. Several kinds of Cypraea were used, including the purple shell, two or three inches long; all the shells except the small ones were employed in pairs. A writer of the second century B.C. speaks of the purple shell as ranking next after the sea tortoise shells, measuring 1 foot 6 inches, which could only be procured in Cochin China and Annam, where they were used to make pots, basins, and other valuable objects. So attached were the Chinese to these primitive coins that the usurper Wangmang restored a shell currency of five kinds, tortoise shell being the highest. From this time we hear no more of cowries in China Proper, but they left traces of themselves in the small copper coins shaped like a small Cypraea, called Dragon's eye or Ant coins. It is doubtless to a similar survival that we owe those curious silver coins made in the shape of shells which come from the north of Burmah and of which there are several specimens in the British Museum. They are about the size of a cowry, and doubtless served as a higher unit in a currency of which the lower units were formed by real shells.

Powers writes of the Karoks and other tribes of California: "For money they make use of the red scalps of woodpeckers, which rate at $2.50 to $5.00 a piece, and of the dentalium shell, of which they grind off the tip, and string it on strings. The strings are usually about as long as a man's arm. It is called al-li-ko-chik (in Yarok this signifies literally Indian money) not only on the Klamath but from Crescent City to Eel River, though the tribes using it speak several different languages." Again he writes: "Some of the young bloods array their Dulcineas for the dance with lavish adornments, hanging on their dress 30, 40, or 50 dollars worth of dimes, quarter-dollars, and half-dollars arranged in strings."

In 685 B.C. in parts of China pearls and gems, gold, knives, and cloth were the money, and under the Shou dynasty (1100 B.C.) we understand from ancient commentaries that the gold circulated in little cubes of a square inch, and the copper in round, tongue-like plates by the tchin tchu, while the silk cloth 2 feet 2 inches wide in rolls of 40 feet formed a piece.

The Chinese likewise used hoes as money, just as we shall find the wild people of Annam doing at the present hour. But in the course of time the hoe became a true currency, and little hoes were employed as coins in some parts of China. In Marco Polo's time cowries were in full use, as in the province of Yunnam.

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 2,000 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.

Among the fishermen who dwelt along the shores of the Indian Ocean, from the Persian Gulf to the southern shores of Hindustan, Ceylon, and the Maldive Islands, it would appear that the fishhook, to them the most important of all implements, passed as currency. In the course of time it became a true money, just as did the hoe in China.

Advancing westward we find the Ossetes of the Caucasus at the present moment employ the cow as their unit of value, the prices of all commodities being stated as one, two, three, or four cows, or even at one-tenth or one-hundredth of the value of a cow. The ox is

worth two cows, and the cow is worth ten sheep. This people regulate compensation for wounds thus: they measure the length of the wound in barley corns, and for every barley corn which it measures a cow has to be paid. We have little doubt that over all Hither Asia the same method of employing the cow as the principal unit of value obtained. It is that which we found among the Greeks of the Homeric poems, who were in full contact with Northern Asia Minor, and was almost certainly that of the Semites who dealt in the South. Just as we find the buffalo, and the pots, bronze platters, arrows, lances, and hoes standing side by side in well-defined mutual relation among the Bahnars of Cochin China, so we find in Homer that whilst the cow is the principal unit, the slave is employed as an occasional higher unit, and the kettle (lebes), the pot (tripous), the ax and the half-ax, hides, raw copper, and pig iron stand beside the cow as multiples or sub-multiples. When Ajax and Idomeneus make a bet on the issue of the chariot race, the proposed wager is a pot or a kettle, whilst from another passage we learn that the usual prizes given at the funeral games of a chieftain were female slaves and pots (tripods). Gold and silver were early employed by the people of Northern Europe in the form of rings.

38. CATTLE AS MONEY'

BY HOMER

Then Peleus' son ordained straightway the prizes for a third contest, offering them to the Danaans, for the grievous wrestling match: for the winner a great tripod for standing on the fire, prized by the Achaians among them at twelve oxen's worth; and for the loser he brought a woman into their midst, skilled in manifold work, and they prized her at four oxen.

39. EARLY CURRENCY OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES

BY HORACE WHITE

The first settlers of New England found wampumpeage, sometimes called wampum and sometimes peage, in use among the aborigines as an article of adornment and a medium of exchange. It consisted of beads made from the inner whorls of certain shells found

1 Iliad, book xxiii.

2

Adapted from Money and Banking, pp. 3-9. (Ginn & Co., 1895.)

in sea water. The beads were polished and strung together in belts or sashes. They were of two colors, black and white, the black being double the value of the white. The early settlers of New England, finding that the fur trade with the Indians could be carried on with wampum, easily fell into the habit of using it as money. It was practically redeemable in beaver skins, which were in constant demand in Europe. The unit of wampum money was the fathom, consisting of 360 white beads worth six pence the fathom. In 1648 Connecticut decreed that wampum should be "strung suitably and not small and great uncomely and disorderly mixt as formerly it hath been." Four white beads passed as the equivalent of a penny in Connecticut, although six were usually required in Massachusetts and sometimes eight. In the latter colony wampum was at first made legally receivable for debts for the amount of 12d. only. In 1641 the limit was raised to £10, but only for two years. It was then reduced to 40s. It was not receivable for taxes in Massachusetts. The use of wampum money extended southward as far as Virginia.

The decline of the beaver trade brought wampum money into disrepute. When it ceased to be exchangeable in large sums for an article of international trade the basis of its value was gone. Moreover it was extensively counterfeited, and the white beads were turned into the more valuable black ones by dyeing. Nevertheless it lingered in the currency of the colonies as small change till the early years of the eighteenth century. While it was in use it fluctuated greatly in value.

The first General Assembly of Virginia met at Jamestown July 31, 1619, and the first law passed was one fixing the price of tobacco "at three shillings the beste, and the second sorte at 19d. the pounde." Tobacco was already the local currency. In 1642 an act was passed forbidding the making of contracts payable in money, thus virtually making tobacco the sole currency. The act of 1642 was repealed in 1656, but nearly all the trading in the province continued to be done with tobacco as the medium of exchange.

In 1628 the price of tobacco in silver had been 3s. 6d. per pound in Virginia. The cultivation increased so rapidly that in 1631 the price had fallen to 6d. In order to raise the price, steps were taken to restrict the amount grown and to improve the quality. The right to cultivate tobacco was restricted to 1,500 plants per poll. Carpenters and other mechanics were not allowed to plant tobacco "or to do any other work in the ground." These measures were ineffective.

The price continued to fall. In 1639 it was only 3d. It was now enacted that half of the good and all of the bad should be destroyed, and that thereafter all creditors should accept 40 pounds for 100; that the crop of 1640 should not be sold for less than 12d., nor that in 1641 for less than 2s. per pound, under penalty of forfeiture of the whole crop. This law was ineffectual as the previous ones had been, but it caused much injustice between debtors and creditors by impairing the obligation of existing contracts. In 1645 tobacco was worth only 1d. and in 1665 only 1d. per pound.

In the year 1666 a treaty was negotiated and ratified between the colonies of Maryland, Virginia, and Carolina, to stop planting tobacco for one year in order to raise the price. This temporary suspension of planting made necessary some other mode of paying debts. It was accordingly enacted that both public dues and private debts falling due "in the vacant year from planting" might be paid in country produce at specified rates.

In 1683 an extraordinary series of occurrences grew out of the low price of tobacco. Many people signed petitions for a cessation of planting for one year for the purpose of increasing the price. As the request was not granted, they banded themselves together and went through the country destroying tobacco plants wherever found. The evil reached such proportions that in April, 1684, the Assembly passed a law declaring that these malefactors had passed beyond the bounds of riot, and that their aim was the subversion of the government. It was enacted that if any persons, to the number of eight or more, should go about destroying tobacco plants, they should be adjudged traitors and suffer death.

In 1727 tobacco notes were legalized. These were in the nature of certificates of deposit in government warehouses issued by official inspectors. They were declared by law current and payable for all tobacco debts within the warehouse district where they were issued. They supply an early example of the distinction between money on the one hand, and government notes, or bank notes, on the other. The tobacco in the warehouses was the real medium of exchange. The tobacco notes were orders payable to bearer for the delivery of this money. They were redeemable in tobacco of a particular grade, but not in any specified lots. Counterfeiting the notes was made a felony. In 1734 another variety of currency called "crop notes" was introduced. These were issued for particular casks of tobacco, each cask being branded and the marks specified on the notes.