|
+----------------+----------------------------+
| China (1200) | Bark of the mulberry-tree. |
+----------------+----------------------------+
It is evident that every primitive people uses as money those articles
upon which they set the highest value--as cattle, jewels, slaves, salt,
musket-balls, pins, snuff, whiskey, cotton shirts, leather, axes, and
hammers; or those articles for which there was a foreign demand, and
which they could trade off to the merchants for articles of
necessity--as tea, silk, codfish, coonskins, cocoa-nuts, and tobacco.
Then there is a later stage, when the stamp of the government is
impressed upon paper, wood, pasteboard, or the bark of trees, and these
articles are given a legal-tender character.
When a civilized nation comes in contact with a barbarous people they
seek to trade with them for those things which they need; a
metal-working people, manufacturing weapons of iron or copper, will seek
for the useful metals, and hence we find iron, copper, tin, and lead
coming into use as a standard of values--as money; for they can always
be converted into articles of use and weapons of war.
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