Folkways. William Graham Sumner

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СКАЧАТЬ 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which they took in again when the fair closed.288 On the French Congo the boatmen were paid with paper bons, which were superseded by metal ones in 1887.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 Götzen 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 СКАЧАТЬ