Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/614

594 —In Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, Professor Jevons relates an amusing experience of a Parisian singer who made a professional tour of the world some years ago. In crossing the Pacific Ocean the steamship was unexpectedly

compelled to call at the Society Islands, where she was detained for a day or two. A few foreigners who were there invited the singer to give a concert, agreeing that she should receive one third of the gross proceeds. The lady accepted the invitation, and the concert was well attended by the natives, who came from all parts of the islands. When the receipts were counted the lady found that her share consisted of several pigs, fowls, goats, and a large quantity of bananas, cocoanuts, and other tropical fruit. There was very little money in circulation on the islands, and, as mademoiselle could not consume any considerable portion of her share of the proceeds of the concert, it became necessary to feed the live stock with the fruit.

This story is told to illustrate a difficulty which arose in the earliest commercial transactions from the want of a common medium of exchange, which difficulty led to the invention (about 700 ) of coined money as a "go-between" or substitute for direct barter.

At the first glance it might appear a simple matter for the butcher, the farmer, or the miller to make due exchange of commodities without the intervention of the go-between called money, but a little reflection will soon reveal at least three great difficulties:

First, that of finding two persons whose disposable goods mutually suit each other's wants; second, the impracticability of subdividing many articles—for example, a tailor can not cut up a coat into small portions without destroying its value; third, the complexities involved in equitably adjusting the relative values of various commodities. These and other difficulties led to the selection, quite early in