Note 6 — Chapter XI · The New Millennium.

But the new system did not work smoothly. There was no harmony of sentiment between buyers and sellers; and what was one man’s ideal of what he should give or receive in trade was always different from every other man’s; and, before the community were well aware of what they were about, they found themselves drifting back to the adoption of the old system of barter, which had been tried and abandoned in the early days of the island’s history. Instead of one price, every one who had commodities or services to sell adopted a scale of at least four prices: “pay price,” “money price,” “pay as money price,” and a “trusting price;” and the seller, before fixing his price, invariably asked his customer how he would pay.6 “Pay price” was barter; “money price” was payment in foreign coin; “pay as money” was in the ideal money of the island; “trusting” was an enhanced price, according to time. Thus, supposing a customer wanted a knife, its price in “pay” would be a bushel of corn; in “money price,” a fifty-cent gold or silver coin; in “pay as money,” sometimes as much as he could bring in a basket, at other times as much as he could bring in a wheelbarrow; and before the ultimate abandonment of the use of ideal money, a cart had to be employed to bring the money. Trade in this way became “most intricate.”