One circumstance which, pending this result, tended to greatly relieve the popular apprehension on this score, was the reading in foreign newspapers that the people in certain comparatively poor countries—as Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Washington Territory—had no more difficulty in obtaining and retaining all the gold that they found it desirable to use for the purpose of money, than they had in obtaining and retaining all the wheelbarrows and steam-engines that they desired to use in conducting their business; and laughed when any body talked of depriving them of their gold money.
The first step having been thus taken in the right direction, a sequence of other proper acts occurred as naturally and with the same favorable results as in the celebrated case of the old woman and the kid; in which it will be remembered that as soon as the water began to quench the fire, the fire began to burn the stick, the stick began to beat the dog, the dog began to bite the kid, and, as a consequence of this sequence and its concluding act, the old woman got safely home with the kid, though at a period of the evening much later than was desirable or proper. And so, by a succession of events, prosperity slowly but surely came back to the island.
As for the Friends of Humanity, who had been the authors of so much financial and commercial disturbance and national misfortune, they soon ceased to command attention from any one, then became objects of laughter and derision, and finally passed out of the remembrance of the people, who were now all too busy in restoring their fortunes to give a thought to bygone and mortifying experiences. Some became convinced of their errors, and made good citizens; but in the case of the majority, the belief that the calling of things of no intrinsic value by the name of money was equivalent to the creation of wealth, became chronic, and finally developed into a harmless insanity. On pleasant days they might often be seen on the corners of the streets gathering leaves and bits of sticks and straws, and telling the children that assembled about them that all that was necessary to make these worthless gatherings money was to simply have confidence that they were so. But this was asking for a simplicity of belief that was a little too much, even for the children.
It only remains to add that, as memorials of this eventful history, there is still exhibited in one of the public buildings on the island an exact model of the cave in which the venerable Robinson Crusoe dwelt, and, what is even more interesting, the identical chest which he brought from the ship, and which contained the pins, needles, knives, cloth, and scissors, and the three great bags of what was then useless, but now good and true, money. Numerous specimens of the “ideal money” may also be seen in the same room, together with a picture of the barber who papered his shop with it, and of the dog which the people paraded in the streets covered with a plaster of pitch and currency.[6]
[1] This is the American interpretation. The English interpretation of “legal tender” was brought out in a debate in the House of Lords, in June, 1811, when it was shown to mean, in its application to Great Britain, no more than this: that in a suit between creditor and debtor, if a judgment went against the debtor, he was allowed to plead a tender of bank-notes in arrest of execution, but he could not claim that the notes should be forced upon the creditor in discharge of the debt. During the long suspension of specie payments in Great Britain, therefore, bank-notes were never made legal tender in the American sense.
[2] After the Revolutionary war it was considered disgraceful to take advantage of the legal-tender character of the depreciated Continental or State paper money to liquidate debts with it; and the Society of Cincinnati expelled a member for so doing. The State of Rhode Island also, which longer than any of the other States endeavored to maintain by law the legal-tender character and use of such money, was often spoken of in consequence as “Rogue’s” in place of “Rhode” Island.
[3] To any who may desire to know how far imagination has been drawn upon for this picture, reference is made to the speech of Hon. O. P. Morton, United States Senate, “Congressional Record,” vol. ii., part i., Forty-third Congress, First Session, p. 669.
[4] The pertinacity “with which a mind befogged on the subject of money and currency holds on to the delusion that the making and issue of promises to pay, and calling the same money, is equivalent to the creation of wealth; and, vice versâ, that the cancellation or withdrawal, by payment, of such promises is the same thing as the destruction of wealth, and also tends to make money—in the sense of capital—scarce, and interest high, finds many amusing illustrations, which for educational purposes are better than arguments.