Robinson Crusoe's Money;

termined to be an Ho

what the State should declare money should be offered him; and, also, that when any person had bought commodities and services of another, and had promised to pay for them after a time, he might fully discharge the obligation by tendering

val of th

y which shall in any way sanction any such evasion of the letter or spirit of its obligations can have no rightful claim to call itself an honest, Christian people; and if any community enacts and maintains laws compelling any person to receive in exchange, or in pay for his services or products, something which he did not agree to and would not otherwise receive, such a community has no rightful claim to call itself a free community. The people on the island, therefore, decided that they would allow the island authorities to interfere with exchanges to this extent only: that the medium of exchange and measure of values that they had adopted and called a Friday, or a dollar, should always and under all circumstances contain 25.8 grains of standard gold; that this standard should never be departed from; and that although no one should b

shares in enterprises which never could pay. And when people by one or more of such methods lost the results of their hard labor and toil, they naturally felt depressed, lost confidence in their fellow-men, and thought times and things might be improved by turning all those in office out, and putting new men in. But no one on the island ever for a moment imagined that there was any way to honestly replace the money they had lost, except