1871.] Science of Money. 317 



the primitivism to which we can still to-day refer in illustra- 

 tion of our subject. 



Let us now take a further step ; let us, in short, go as 

 near to the threshold of money as may still indubitably leave 

 us outside of it. We shall suppose a society where labour 

 is organised into a daily vocation ; the society tolerably 

 compact — not scattered and merely pastoral; As a whole it 

 is fairly well off, with a permanent stock of means. In a 

 society thus conditioned we should find that industry had 

 taken the direction of the subdivision of labour. Each 

 household would be busy over something special, instead of 

 trying to produce directly everything it required. Each 

 thus acquiring a special skill and knowledge in its own de- 

 partment, the productive power of society at large is greatly 

 increased. Under this system, into which an industrious 

 people, when sufficiently aggregated, instinctively adjust 

 themselves, owing to practical appreciation of its advantage, 

 there is concurrently, of course, a system of mutual exchange. 

 These exchanges, which would assume at first only a casual 

 and relatively unimportant aspect, will gradually by their 

 universality come to be only second — if, indeed, second — to 

 production itself. 



Let us follow the probable course of the exchanges in 

 such an early community. Each trader, we may suppose, 

 will first supply his family from his own special wares, to 

 the extent of their suitability and of his own means. He 

 will next effect exchanges of his wares for his family's fur- 

 ther wants ; and lastly, he will aim at maintaining a stock 

 adequate to his trade. 



Now, if there were no diversities of personal business qua- 

 lities, or such things as good and bad fortune, communities 

 might plod along in this simple way for very lengthened 

 terms without any development beyond the few and direct 

 exchanges required. But surplus means gradually come 

 into various hands, and when the immediate wants of the 

 family and the trade are provided for, what is to be done 

 with what is over — with a surplus always increasing in a 

 vigorous and advancing society ? We know that society 

 does not relax its industry when entering on this phase, 

 and therefore that a solution goes on concurrently from 

 the first. The tendency will be to take opportunities of in- 

 vesting such surpluses in some value outside one's own 

 trade. A clothier will not, as his productive power increases, 

 pile up garments indefinitely, nor a butcher or baker mere 

 additional heaps of his own kind of food. The surplus 

 means will go to some variety of investment that commends 



