Note 4 — Chapter V · How the People on the Island and Elsewhere Learned Wisdom.

But to return to the island. Although the first experience of the islanders in selecting a commodity to be used as money had been particularly unfortunate, the necessity of having some agency to serve the purpose of money remained as great as before, and consequently a new commodity had to be selected. Various people proposed various things. Some proposed to use bananas, which were always desirable, and, when good and ripe, were always exchangeable at a very constant value; but their unfitness to be used as money was acknowledged as soon as it was pointed out that bananas decayed very quickly after they became most useful, and that therefore a man who had plenty of money to-day might have none tomorrow, and that through no fault of his own.4 Wheat, cattle, and pieces of stamped iron were also proposed, but all of these were found to be unsuitable in some essential particular. Thus, for example, it was objected to wheat, that, though it was almost always in demand, and represented a very constant amount of labor for its production, it was too bulky to carry about, and rarely had the same exact value one year as another; to cattle, that it was impossible to divide up an ox, cutting off the tail at one time and the ears at another, for the purpose of making change, without destroying the value of the animal as a whole; and that if cows in general were to be used as legal tender to pay debts, the very poorest cow would very probably be selected from the money-pen for such a purpose;5 while, if iron were adopted as money, and circulated at its current value, it might be necessary to move about a ton to pay a debt of twenty or thirty dollars.