The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRobinson Crusoe's Money;

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofRobinson Crusoe's Money;This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Robinson Crusoe's Money;Author: David Ames WellsIllustrator: Thomas NastRelease date: August 6, 2012 [eBook #40429]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for ProjectGutenberg (This file was produced from images generouslymade available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBINSON CRUSOE'S MONEY; ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Robinson Crusoe's Money;Author: David Ames WellsIllustrator: Thomas NastRelease date: August 6, 2012 [eBook #40429]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for ProjectGutenberg (This file was produced from images generouslymade available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: Robinson Crusoe's Money;

Author: David Ames WellsIllustrator: Thomas Nast

Author: David Ames Wells

Illustrator: Thomas Nast

Release date: August 6, 2012 [eBook #40429]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for ProjectGutenberg (This file was produced from images generouslymade available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBINSON CRUSOE'S MONEY; ***

Robinson Crusoe’s Money.ByDavid A. Wells.New York:Harper & Brothers, Publishers,Franklin Square.1876.“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.’”—Page 9.“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.’”—Page 9.Cobden Club Edition.Robinson Crusoe’s Money;Or, theRemarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunesof a Remote Island Community.ByDavid A. Wells,Late U. S. Special Commissioner of Revenue.With Illustrations by Thomas Nast.“It requires a great deal of philosophy to observe once what may be seen every day.”—Rousseau.New York:Harper & Brothers, Publishers,Franklin Square.1876.Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, byHarper & Brothers,In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.Preface.Preface.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 communicatinginstruction, 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.Norwich, Conn.,January, 1876.Contents.Chapter I.PageThe Three Great Bags of Money11Chapter II.A New Social Order of Things13Chapter III.The Period of Barter15Chapter IV.How They Invented Money20Chapter V.How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom26Chapter VI.Gold, and How they Came to Use It33Chapter VII.How the Islanders Determined to be an Honest and Free People50Chapter VIII.How the People on the Island Came to Use Currency in the Place of Money55Chapter IX.War with the Cannibals, and What Came of It60Chapter X.After the War72Chapter XI.The New Millennium83Chapter XII.Getting Sober108Illustrations.Page“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’”frontispieceThe representatives of labor and the representatives of capital proposing to have a difference18Then the bubble burst; stock companies all failed29The survival of the fittest52A shadow is not a substance58One way of blowing a dissatisfied party out of existence70This scheme accordingly found many opponents, who alleged that, if it were carried out, it would deprive them of money, and consequently of instrumentalities for making their exchanges75“An instrument of military necessity, once created, remains such an instrumentality for continued use for all time; no matter who it may hit, or what property it may destroy”81The doctors prescribe continued low (fiscal) diet85The Arab and the camel92Milk-tickets for babies, in place of milk97An inflation look ahead102Increasing the volume of the currency106The hungry dog and the shadow115

Robinson Crusoe’s Money.ByDavid A. Wells.New York:Harper & Brothers, Publishers,Franklin Square.1876.

Robinson Crusoe’s Money.

ByDavid A. Wells.

New York:

Harper & Brothers, Publishers,

Franklin Square.

1876.

“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.’”—Page 9.“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.’”—Page 9.

Cobden Club Edition.Robinson Crusoe’s Money;Or, theRemarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunesof a Remote Island Community.ByDavid A. Wells,Late U. S. Special Commissioner of Revenue.With Illustrations by Thomas Nast.“It requires a great deal of philosophy to observe once what may be seen every day.”—Rousseau.New York:Harper & Brothers, Publishers,Franklin Square.1876.

Cobden Club Edition.Robinson Crusoe’s Money;Or, theRemarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunesof a Remote Island Community.

Cobden Club Edition.

Robinson Crusoe’s Money;

Or, theRemarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunesof a Remote Island Community.

ByDavid A. Wells,Late U. S. Special Commissioner of Revenue.With Illustrations by Thomas Nast.

“It requires a great deal of philosophy to observe once what may be seen every day.”—Rousseau.

New York:Harper & Brothers, Publishers,Franklin Square.1876.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, byHarper & Brothers,In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Preface.Preface.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 communicatinginstruction, 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.Norwich, Conn.,January, 1876.

Preface.Preface.

Preface.

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 communicatinginstruction, 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.Norwich, Conn.,January, 1876.

At last the old idea—recognized in fables, allegories, and parables—of making a story the medium for communicatinginstruction, 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.

Norwich, Conn.,January, 1876.

Contents.Chapter I.PageThe Three Great Bags of Money11Chapter II.A New Social Order of Things13Chapter III.The Period of Barter15Chapter IV.How They Invented Money20Chapter V.How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom26Chapter VI.Gold, and How they Came to Use It33Chapter VII.How the Islanders Determined to be an Honest and Free People50Chapter VIII.How the People on the Island Came to Use Currency in the Place of Money55Chapter IX.War with the Cannibals, and What Came of It60Chapter X.After the War72Chapter XI.The New Millennium83Chapter XII.Getting Sober108

Contents.

Chapter I.PageThe Three Great Bags of Money11Chapter II.A New Social Order of Things13Chapter III.The Period of Barter15Chapter IV.How They Invented Money20Chapter V.How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom26Chapter VI.Gold, and How they Came to Use It33Chapter VII.How the Islanders Determined to be an Honest and Free People50Chapter VIII.How the People on the Island Came to Use Currency in the Place of Money55Chapter IX.War with the Cannibals, and What Came of It60Chapter X.After the War72Chapter XI.The New Millennium83Chapter XII.Getting Sober108

Chapter I.Page

The Three Great Bags of Money11

Chapter II.

A New Social Order of Things13

Chapter III.

The Period of Barter15

Chapter IV.

How They Invented Money20

Chapter V.

How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom26

Chapter VI.

Gold, and How they Came to Use It33

Chapter VII.

How the Islanders Determined to be an Honest and Free People50

Chapter VIII.

How the People on the Island Came to Use Currency in the Place of Money55

Chapter IX.

War with the Cannibals, and What Came of It60

Chapter X.

After the War72

Chapter XI.

The New Millennium83

Chapter XII.

Getting Sober108

Illustrations.Page“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’”frontispieceThe representatives of labor and the representatives of capital proposing to have a difference18Then the bubble burst; stock companies all failed29The survival of the fittest52A shadow is not a substance58One way of blowing a dissatisfied party out of existence70This scheme accordingly found many opponents, who alleged that, if it were carried out, it would deprive them of money, and consequently of instrumentalities for making their exchanges75“An instrument of military necessity, once created, remains such an instrumentality for continued use for all time; no matter who it may hit, or what property it may destroy”81The doctors prescribe continued low (fiscal) diet85The Arab and the camel92Milk-tickets for babies, in place of milk97An inflation look ahead102Increasing the volume of the currency106The hungry dog and the shadow115

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