Читать книгу Robinson Crusoe's Money - David Ames Wells - Страница 3

The first person that came to join Robinson Crusoe on his island was Friday, and next, Friday’s father. But even with this increase of numbers there was still no use for the money, inasmuch as the three constituted but one family, the members of which labored and shared all useful things they acquired in common, and made no exchanges. But when Will Atkins and the English sailors came, and the population of the island, we may suppose, was largely and permanently increased, a new social order of things became inevitable. Incompatibility of taste and temper, and a natural desire for personal independence, soon made it impossible for all to live and share in common as one family. And self-interest also soon taught, that, in order that the quantity of useful things available for the new community as a whole might be increased, and their quality perfected, it was desirable, that, instead of each man endeavoring to supply all his own wants, and for this purpose following irregularly the business of a carpenter, baker, tailor, mason, and the like, it was best for each man to pursue but one occupation, and, making himself skilled in it, procure the things which he himself did not produce, and which he might need, by exchanging his own products or services for the products or services of some other man. They saw instinctively that Robinson Crusoe, although originally civilized, would, if he had remained alone on the island, have inevitably become a pure savage, and simply because he was alone, and could make no exchanges. For a time, the things which he obtained from the wreck raised him above this condition; for what the ship brought him—the knives, axes, guns, cloth, etc.—were capital, or the accumulated labor of other men. But if the ship had given him nothing, he would have had to make every thing for himself—“his hat, his garments, his feet-covering, his bread, his meat with bow and arrows, his house by blows of his hatchet, his hatchet by blows of his hammer, his hammer heaven knows how”—and become a barbarian in spite of himself, because all his effort would have been required, and would have only sufficed, to insure him a bare subsistence.

Systematic division of labor and the exchange of products and services thus, for the first time on the island, came in, and constituted a part of the perfected machinery of production, or the means of getting a living. And it is also to be here noted, that, because commodities and services now for the first time became exchangeable, they also for the first time acquired the attribute which we call value.