"The need of metallic currency was severely felt. In 1654 it was ordered that no coin should be exported, except 20s. to pay each one's traveling expenses, on penalty of forfeiture of the offender's whole estate.
"The cost of carrying the country produce taken for taxes amounted to 10 per cent of the collections. A constable once collected 130 bushels of peas as taxes in Springfield. He found that he could transport this portion of the public revenue most cheaply by boat. Launching it on the Connecticut River, he shipped so much water on board at the falls that the peas were spoiled. Thus we learn that money ought to be easy of carriage and not liable to injury by exposure to the elements.
"In 1670 it was ordered for the first time that contracts made in silver should be paid in silver.
"In 1675, during King Philip's war, the need of metallic money for public use was so great that a deduction of 50 per cent was offered on all taxes so paid.
"The first local currency of New Netherlands was wampum, but it was subordinate to the silver coinage of the mother country; that is, it was reckoned in terms of that coinage as fixed by the Dutch West India Company from time to time. It was fixed at six white beads for a stiver. Wampum was not made in the province, but was imported from the east end of Long Island, the principal seat of production. It is mentioned in a letter from the Patroons of New Netherlands to the States General in June, 1634, as 'being in a manner the currency of the country with which the produce of the country is paid for,' the produce of the country being furs.
"Beaver soon became current here, as in New England, and for the same reason, its currency value being fixed by the company at 8 florins per skin. As 5 wampum beads were equal to 1 stiver and 20 stivers to 1 florin, and 8 florins to 1 skin, the ratio of wampum to beaver was 960 to 1. The market ratio did not coincide with the legal ratio very long. Nor was the legal ratio of either wampum or beaver to silver maintained; for, in 1656, Director Stuyvesant wrote to the company urging that beaver be rated at 6 florins instead of 8, and wampum at 8 for a stiver instead of 6, as these rates were nearer the commercial values.
"In 1719 the Assembly of South Carolina made rice receivable for taxes, 'to be delivered in good barrels upon the bay in Charlestown.' In the following year a tax of 1,200,000 pounds of rice was levied, and commissioners were appointed to issue rice orders to public creditors, in anticipation of collection, at the rate of 30s. per 100 lb., in the following form:
"'This order entitles the bearer to one hundred weight of well-cleaned merchantable rice to be paid to the commissioners that receive the tax on the second Tuesday in March, 1723.'
"Rice orders were made receivable for all purposes, and counterfeiting was made felony without benefit of clergy.
"In eastern Tennessee and Kentucky, early in the nineteenth century, deer skins and raccoon skins were receivable for taxes and served the purposes of currency.