28 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Jury, 1901, 
The order of the day is—every man to his trade—specialisation of labour. The 
jack of all trades and master of none is not a ynlued member of society. When each 
member of the community confines himself to his particular trade or occupation he 
thereby becomes a skilled worker, and the best possible results are obtained from his 
Prgueed labour. But no matter how proficient a man may be at his special calling, 
e cannot satisfy all his wants ‘without exchanging what he produces for what some 
other man produces. 
To use a homely illustration, it would be rather troublesome for the farmer to 
carry a fat pig to the tailor when a coat was wanted, and doubtless it would be just 
as awkward from the tailor’s point of view. : 
Money, however, gets over the difficulty, and facilitates the exchange of the 
products referred to. Its invention enables the farmer to exchange his pig for cash, 
and that cash makes the securing of a coat a less difficult matter than if he had to 
barter his “ grunter” for it. This illustrates money acting as ‘‘a medium of exchange.” 
Again, the cash received would be a definite sum—the exact value of the animal 
disposed of—and the coat required from the tailor would also have a fixed value. The 
farmer’s product might be worth more or it might be worth less than the tailor’s; and 
if the barter system were in vogue, the difliculty of adjusting the difference in value 
would cause no end of trouble. Money overcomes this, and makes exchange easy, by — 
affording a ready means of estimating definitely the comparative value of different 
commodities. This measuring of value is another function which money discharges in 
the social organism, and it is scarcely less in importance to that of the service it 
renders as a medium of exchange. 
To the most ordinary mind it must be evident that money has become actually an — 
essential to civilised mankind. In the social development called civilisation it is not 
only the tool we use for effecting the exchange of one commodity for another, but it ig 
also indispensable as a fixed standard value from which all products are valued. By 
its invention we escape the clumsy system of barter, and the advantages derived from 
the division of labour are brought within our reach. We are enabled to reciprocate 
with each other in satisfying the many wants which the higher civilisation of to-day 
brings inits train. It has aptly been designated by the great economist, John 8. Mill, as 
“only a contrivance for saving time and labour.” It is no less indispensable to our 
comfort and prosperity than the railway by means of which our products are taken to 
market and our supplies brought to us. Mfill’s definition of money may not inappro- 
priately be applied to the railway. Both are media of exchange; both are good, but 
it is possible to pay too much even for a good thing. The farmer may be crushed by 
excessive railages extinguishing his small margin of profit, and just as truly can he be 
ruined by having to pay usurious rates of interest on money he has been compelled to 
borrow to tide him over a bad time. In support of the former, we have it on the 
authority of Professor Scheligan that in ’82 the railroads took one-half of the entire 
wheat crop of Kansas to carry the other half to market. In this country, the fixing up 
of the railway tariff is in the hands of the Government, and the Government are in the 
hands of the people. The interest rates charged to farmers are as yet outside the 
sphere of the Queensland Government’s control. 
Individually, it is not in the power of farmers to secure monetary assistance at 
low rates of interest. They usually drift into the hands of the storekeepers ; and 
whilst, in exceptional cases, most generous treatment is meted out to them, as a rule 
the reverse obtains, and their condition soon becomes hopeless. The storekeeper has 
the farmer, who is under obligation to him, held at a great disadvantage, inasmuch as 
the farmer must buy everything he requires from that storekeeper, and he must also 
ass the products of his toil through the same hands. Whether he buys or whether 
e sells, he is denied any “say” in determining prices. What the storekeeper cares to 
give is what the farmer must content himself to take. The difference between cash 
payments and booking prices ranges from 5 to 60 per cent. The writer has known ofa + 
small chaffeutter offered for £6 15s. cash; booked, £7 15s. In this case, if the 
accommodation be extended to twelve months the charge is at the rate of 15 per cent. 
per annum ; if six months, 30 per cent.; but it is far from uncommon for a booked 
purchase to be paid for in three months’ time; and if this happened with regard to this 
particular transaction, then the trifling three months’ accommodation was paid for at 
the rate of 60 per cent. per annum. 
It is within my own knowledge, and can be further evidenced by abundant 
testimony, that this anomaly—the storekeeper-banker—has been the cause of many a 
struggling farmer's downfall. I have known men thus enthralled who were content to 
believe that this bondage to the storekeeper was an essential part of their being, and 
who had become so degraded morally and intellectually that they were Reeshne of 
the rational and manly discontent of freemen. 
