“Not faster than from year to year,” argued Clara. “And next spring, when perhaps we can get more, it will be very easy to give out new ones, and take in the old, and break them up entirely before everybody’s eyes. O, I think this is the best sort of money we have thought of yet.”
Paul agreed with her, and promised to call the little company together to consult about the matter.
The first thing that struck everybody was that these bones would be without some of the most important qualities which recommend coined money as a medium of exchange.
“What are we to say to their value?” asked Taddeus. “There is no cost of production, except the little trouble and time Clara will spend in picking them up.”
“It is plain that they will have no value in themselves,” observed Paul, “but only such as we shall put upon them by common agreement.”
“That is,” said Ernest, “they will be a sign of value only, and not a commodity. Will a mere sign of value serve our purpose as a standard of value? That is the question. For the thing we most want is a standard of value. It was in this respect that our skins failed us.”
“The bones will serve our own little party as a standard of value, well enough,” replied Paul. “The difficulty will be when we come to deal with our neighbours, who not only use a different currency, but to whom mammoth bones are absolutely worthless. When we used skins, it was difficult to impress upon traders the full value at which we estimated our money; but it had some real value with them from its being a commodity as well as a sign.”
“Then we have to choose between the two inconveniences,” observed Ernest; “whether to fix a standard which none will agree to but ourselves, but which will serve our purpose well; or whether to use a medium of exchange whose value is acknowledged by the neighbouring traders, but which is, in fact, no standard to us, as it varies with the success or failure of every shooting expedition.”
“What a pity it seems,” observed Paul, “that all the world cannot agree upon some standard of value! What a prodigious deal of trouble it would save!”
“And where,” asked Ernest, “would you find a commodity which is held in equal esteem in all countries, and by ail classes? Even gold and silver, the most probable of any, would never do. There are parts of the world where lumps of them are tossed about as toys: where they are had without cost of production; while here, you see what an expensive apparatus is required to work out any portion of them;—an expense of capital and of human machinery——”