of money for goods and goods for money, from which gain or loss may
result; and furthermore that the risk (aleatory element) in this
exchange is intensified, if time is allowed to intervene. Inside the
we-group the first need for money is for fees, fines, amercements, and
bride price. In Melanesia pigs are not called money and there is shell,
feather, and mat money, but pigs are paid for fines, penalties,
contributions to feasts, fees in the secret society, pay for wives, and
in other societal relations. What is needed is a mobile form of wealth,
with which social dues can be paid. This is the function of money which
the paper-money projectors have in mind when they propose to issue paper
which the state shall take for taxes. It is evident that it is to be
distinguished from the economic function of money as a circulating
medium. The intragroup money needs to be especially a measure and store
of value, while the intergroup money needs to be a medium of exchange.
In the former case barter is easy; in the latter case it is regular. In
the former case a multiple standard is available; in the latter case
what is needed to discharge balances is a commodity of universal demand.
When credit is introduced its sphere is intragroup. The debtors would
like the money to be what every one can get. The creditors would like it
to be what every one wants.

+144. Various predominant wares.+ In the northeastern horn of Africa the
units of value which are used as money are salt, metal, skins, cotton,
glass, tobacco, wax, coffee beans, and korarima. Cattle and slaves are
also used as units of value from time to time amongst the Oromo. Salt is
used as money in prismatic pieces, twenty-two centimeters long and three
centimeters to five millimeters broad at the bottom, which weigh from
seven hundred and fifty grams to one and one half kilograms each. It is
carried in bundles of twenty to thirty pieces, wound in leaves.[286] The
Galla use rods of iron six to twelve centimeters long, somewhat thicker
in the middle, well available for lance ends, one hundred and thirty of
which are worth one thaler in Schoa; also pieces of copper, tin, and
zinc; calf-skins; black, printed, and unprinted cotton cloth; pieces of
cloth; coarse red cotton yarn (for knitting); and strings of beads. The
universal and intergroup money is the Maria Theresa thaler weighing
571.5 to 576 English grains.[287] Cameron mentions the exchange of
intergroup money for intragroup m