d lets all forces reach their full effect in transactions. The
social effect of debt is best seen in barbarous societies which have
money. Debt and war together made slavery.[363] It is, however, an
entire mistake to regard a money-system as in itself a mischief-working
system. The effect of money is exhausted when we notice that it makes
wealth mobile and lets forces work out their full result by removing
friction. So soon as there is a money there is a chance for exchanges of
money for goods and goods for money, also for the loan and repayment of
money at different times, under which transactions interests may change
and speculation can arise. These facts have always interested the
ethical philosophers. "Naught hath grown current amongst mankind so
mischievous as money. This brings cities to their fall. This drives men
homeless, and moves honest minds to base contrivings. This hath taught
mankind the use of villainies, and how to give an impious turn to every
kind of act."[364] In such diatribes "money" stands for wealth in
general. Money, properly speaking, has no more character than axes of
stone, bronze, iron, or steel. It only does its own work impersonally
and mechanically. The ethical functions and character ascribed to it are
entirely false. There can be no such thing as "tainted money." Money
bears no taint. It serves the murderer and the saint with equal
indifference. It is a tool. It can be used one day for a crime, the next
day for the most beneficent purpose. No use leaves any mark on it. The
Solomon Islanders are expert merchants and "are fully the equal of white
men in cheating."[365] They do it with shell money as whites do it with
gold, silver, and banknotes. That is to say, the "money" is indifferent
because it has no ethical function at all and absolutely no character.

+156.+ There are other topics which might be brought under the struggle
for existence as a cluster of folkways, with great advantage. The
struggle for existence takes on many different forms and produces
phenomena which are cases of folkways. It speedily develops industrial
organization, which, in one point of view, is only the interaction of
folkways. Weights and measures, the measurement of time, the
communication of intelligence, and trade are primary folkways in their
earliest forms and deserve careful study as such.

[165] Smyth, _Aborig. of Victoria_, I, 194, 197.

[166] Mason, _Origin of Invention_, 252.

[167] Tylo