Folkways. William Graham Sumner
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of social relations has clung to money. There is more pure plutocracy in Melanesia than in New York. The differentiation of men by wealth is greatly aided by money, because money adds immensely to the mobility of wealth and 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 Tylor, Anthrop., 208.
168 Powers, California Indians, 50.
169 Lumholtz, Scribner's, October, 1894, 448.
170 Von den Steinen, Berl. Mus., 1888, 205.
171 Southey, Brazil, I, 131.
172 E.g. a rasp made from the skin of the palate of a kind of ray, by Tahitians, Vienna Museum.
173 Mason, Origin of Invention, 23.
174 Grinnell, Folk Tales, 295.
175 Dall, Bur. Eth., III, 122.
176 Ratzel, Völkerkunde, II, 52.
177 Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, I, 202.
178 N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 466.
179 U. S. Nat. Mus., 1890, 471.
180 Ratzel, Völkerkunde, II, 163.
181 Smithson, Contrib. to Knowledge, XXV; Rau, Prehist. Fishing.
182 Von den Steinen, Berl. Mus., 1888, 209, 231, 235.
183 Ehrenreich, Völkerkunde Brasiliens; Berl. Mus., 1891, 57.
184 Prim. Inhab. of Scandinavia, 35.
185 JAI, XXIII, 160.
186 Ibid., XXVIII, 343.
187 Kabary, Karolinenarchipel., 123–130.
188 Hearn, Japan, 139.
189 Ibid., 165.
190 Smyth, Aborig. of Victoria, I, 340.
191 Tylor, JAI, XXII, 137; JAI, XXIV, 336; Early Hist. of Mankind, 195; Ling Roth, Tasmania, 158.
192 JAI, XXIII, 276.
193 Bur. Eth., XVII (Part I), 153, 245.
194 Ibid., XV, 61.
195 Mason, Origin of Invention, 132.
196 Ibid., 123, 136.
197 Intern. Cong. Anthrop., 1893, 67.
198 JAI, XXIV, 44.
199 Ibid., X, 316.
200 Mason, Origin of Invention, 148.
201 Ratzel, Völkerkunde,