CHAPTER VII: EXCHANGE.
§ 754. Distribution and Exchange necessarily originate together; being, in their simplest forms, parts of the same process. Hence we must go back to the point from which the last chapter but one set out, and trace up a correlative series of phenomena.
As with organic phenomena so with super-organic phenomena, study from the evolution point of view introduces us to stages earlier and simpler than any we had conceived. A striking illustration is yielded by the first stages of exchange.
Among incidents of human intercourse few seem simpler than barter; and the underlying conception is one which even the stupidest among savages are supposed to understand. It is not so, however. In Part IV of this work, treating of Ceremonial Institutions, reasons were given for suspecting that barter arose from the giving of presents and the receipt of presents in return. Beyond the evidence there assigned there is sufficient further evidence to justify this conclusion. In the narrative of an early voyager, whose name I do not remember, occurs the statement that barter was not understood by the Australian savages: a statement which I recollect thinking scarcely credible. Verifying testimonies have, however, since come to hand. Concerning the New Guinea people we read:—
“One of the most curious features noticed by Dr. Miklucho Maclay was the apparent absence of trade or barter among the people of Edition: current; Page: [388] Astrolabe Bay. They exchange presents, however, when different tribes visit each other, somewhat as among the New Zealanders, each party giving the other what they have to spare; but no one article seems ever to be exchanged for another of supposed equivalent value.”
Confirmation is yielded by the account D’Albertis gives of certain natives from the interior of New Guinea. Concerning one who came on board he says:—
“I asked him for the belt he wore round his waist, in exchange for some glass beads, but he did not seem to understand the proposal, which I had to make in pantomime instead of vocal language. He spoke a few words with his people, and then he took off his belt, and received in exchange the beads and a looking-glass, in which he seemed afraid to look at himself. When, however, he was on the point of returning to shore, he wanted to have his belt back, and it was impossible to make him understand that he had sold it, and that if he did not wish to part with it he must return the articles he had received in exchange.”
Another instance, somewhat different in its aspect, comes to us from Samoa. Turner says that at a burial “everyone brought a present, and the day after the funeral these presents were all so distributed again as that everyone went away with something in return for what he brought.” Of a remote people, the tribes of Nootka Sound, we read as follows in Bancroft:—
“They manifest much shrewdness in their exchanges; even their system of presents is a species of trade, the full value of each gift being confidently expected in a return present on the next festive occasion.”
A different phase of the process occurs in Africa. Describing the Bihénos, Capello and Ivens tell us:—
“Following the vicious system in operation throughout Africa of not selling anything to the European, but making him a present of it, they extort from him in turn all his goods and effects, bit by bit, until the unhappy man finds himself under the necessity of refusing all presents.”
Thus the very idea of exchange, without which there cannot begin commercial intercourse and industrial organization, has itself to grow out of certain ceremonial actions originated by the desire to propitiate.
Edition: current; Page: [389]§ 755. In the absence of measures of quantity and value, the idea of equivalence must remain vague. Only where the things offered in barter are extremely unlike in their amounts or qualities or characters, does lack of equivalence become manifest. How rude trading transactions are at first, is well shown by the following extract concerning an Indian people, the Chalikatas. Dalton says:—
“It was very interesting to watch the barter that took place there between these suspicious, excitable savages and the cool, wily traders of the plains. The former took salt chiefly in exchange for the commodities they brought down, and they would not submit to its being measured or weighed to them by any known process. Seated in front of the trader’s stall, they cautiously take from a well-guarded basket one of the articles they wish to exchange. Of this they still retain a hold with their toe or their knee as they plunge two dirty paws into the bright white salt. They make an attempt to transfer all they can grasp to their own basket, but the trader, with a sweep of his hand, knocks off half the quantity, and then there is a fiery altercation, which is generally terminated by a concession on the part of the trader of a few additional pinches.”
In the absence of a medium of exchange other inconveniences arise. One is the difficulty of bringing into relation those whose needs are reciprocal. The experiences of Dr. Barth in Africa clearly exemplify this evil.
“A small farmer who brings his corn to the Monday market . . . in Kúkawa, will on no account take his payment in shells, and will rarely accept of a dollar: the person, therefore, who wishes to buy corn, if he has only dollars, must first exchange a dollar for shells, or rather buy shells; then with the shells he must buy a ‘kúlgu,’ or shirt; and after a good deal of bartering he may thus succeed in buying the corn . . . The fatigue to be undergone in the market is such that I have very often seen my servants return in a state of the utmost exhaustion.”
In this place, better than elsewhere, may be named an obstacle to a developed system of exchange which results from the misapprehensions of the uninitiated. Of the Chitralis Captain Younghusband tells us that they supposed rupees to be ornaments only, and could not understand receiving them Edition: current; Page: [390] in payment for work. Pim and Seemann say of the Bayano Indians that—
“They do not seem to understand exactly the value of money, and think that the true drift of making a bargain consists in offering a sum different to that demanded. I happened to be in a shop when four of them came in to buy a comb, for which half-a-crown was asked, but the Indians said that unless the shopkeeper would take three shillings they could not think of having it.”
Here “the higgling of the market” is exhibited under its general form—the expression of a difference between the estimates of buyer and seller; and, showing that lack of discrimination characterizing low intelligences, there is a confusion between the two ways of asserting the difference.
§ 756. It will be instructive to note in this, as in other cases, survivals of such primitive modes of action.
One of the earliest kinds of exchange, while yet the barter of commodities has scarcely taken form, is the barter of assistances. Holub says of the Marutse that in building houses the natives are “so ready to assist one another, that the want [of building material] is soon supplied:” the requirement being that the aids given are at some future day received in return. We have already seen that such exchanges of services are common among uncivilized peoples; and as the efforts, alike in kind, are measurable by the amounts of time occupied, they initiate the idea of equivalence. Transactions of kindred nature survive among ourselves. Reciprocity of help is occasionally seen among farmers in getting in crops; especially where the supply of labour is deficient. Among villagers, too, there are exchanges of garden-produce—a gift of fruit in return for which there is afterwards looked for another kind of gift: repetition of the gift being in some cases dependent on fulfilment of this expectation.
Even in the drinking of men in a public-house, there are usages curiously simulating primitive usages. The pots of Edition: current; Page: [391] beer presented by one to another are by and by to be balanced by equivalent pots; for treating proceeds upon this tacit expectation. We have here, indeed, a curious case, in which no material convenience is gained, but in which there is a reversion to a form of propitiation from which the idea of exchange is nominally, but not actually, excluded.
Moreover there still survives among the least-developed members of the community, namely, boys, the original practice under the name of “swopping”—a practice occasionally followed by adults, though adults of the lower classes.