DEVELOPMENT OF THE MONETARY PROBLEM. 21 



mold and harden the clay into pots, to fashion and wield the oar, 

 to weave the bands of willow into mat and basket, it became 

 impossible for any one man to accomplish for himself all that 

 man had learned to do. There was division of labor, first perhaps 

 between a man and the women of his household, but in time the 

 efforts of the members of any one family alone became impossible 

 to supply its wants. There was a further division of labor, and 

 the exchange of the results of effort is the more marked as the 

 division of labor increases. When one man traded pots of clay to 

 another for flesh obtained in the chase, the efforts of the one in 

 digging, molding, and baking were exchanged for the efforts of the 

 other in hunting, killing, and delivering the game. This was barter 

 and barter, or the exchange of effort as embodied in desired com- 

 modities, without the intervention of other commodities, endured 

 over much of the earth for centuries, complicated by the customs 

 of slavery, feudalism, and absolutism. But as man learned in a 

 greater number of ways to produce a greater variety of articles, 

 barter became inadequate to effect their exchange. A weaver 

 might want a bow and a dozen arrows, and a maker of bows and 

 arrows might want a bolt of cloth ; but the weaver, perceiving 

 that he had to work six days to make the cloth, while six bows 

 and as many dozen arrows might be made in that time, of mate- 

 rial no more difficult to obtain and by a man no more skillful 

 than himself, would properly refuse to exchange the cloth for 

 fewer than that number of bows and arrows — that is, a bolt of 

 cloth would be worth six bows and six dozen arrows. If, however, 

 the exchange were so made, the weaver would have five bows and 

 five dozen arrows which he did not need. He, therefore, would 

 not obtain the reward for his own use of his effort in producing 

 the bolt of cloth until he had exchanged the five bows and five 

 dozen arrows for articles that he could use. Consequently, if bar- 

 ter were persisted in, each purchaser would accumulate a number 

 of articles of different kinds for which he had no need, and he 

 might have no place wherein to store them. Each producer would 

 be endeavoring to exchange articles made by every other pro- 

 ducer, and so have his time absorbed that his efforts in production 

 would be lessened. The process of exchange would be of inex- 

 tricable confusion. If, however, there were some one commodity 

 for which each producer would readily exchange his products at 

 any time, so that, therefore, each person could at any time ex- 

 change this commodity for any other commodity that he might 

 need, the process of exchange would be simplified. It is evident 

 that such a commodity must occupy little space, so that it could 

 be readily stored, that it must not be perishable, and that it must 

 be so divisible that different portions of it might be exchanged 

 for different commodities in proportion to their value — that is, in 



