PREVAILING MANÓBO PRICES
The following list will give a fair idea of the monetary value of some of the commodities that are most frequently exchanged between Manobos.
The values above indicated are based on the monetary terms used to represent their value, and borrowed, possibly, from the terms which are still in vogue in eastern Mindanáo.7
7I-sá-ka sá-pi (Bis., ú-sa'-ka sa-lá-pi), P0.50; ka-há-ti, P0.25; Si-ká-pat, P0.125; Si-kau-au, P0.0625.
From the above scale it will be seen that a pig 1 year old could be exchanged for 2 full-grown chickens, 2 sacks of paddy, and 2 bamboo joints of tobacco. It is not customary to trade in such things as camotes, taro, and corn, the return of them being the usual stipulation, but the corresponding values have been inserted in the above list in order to give the reader an idea of the value of food commodities.
WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
No measure of weight is used by the hill Manóbo. The Christianized Manóbo may have obtained some old scales of the type used by Bisáyas for weighing abaká fiber. These scales are steelyards, the construction of which permitted the Bisáya trader to fleece his non-Christian customers of as much as 50 per cent of their abaká fiber. The method of falsifying the balance was by loading the counterpoising weight with lead, and by filing the crosspiece that acts as fulcrum. Another method which might be used with even true steelyards consisted in giving the counterpoise arm a downward tilt, after the abaká fiber had been loaded on the other arm. This was usually done on the pretense of picking up the counterpoising weight which had been purposely left on the ground.