ROBINSON CRUSOE'S MONEY; Or, the Remarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunes of a Remote Island Community. By DAVID A. WELLS, Late U. S. Special Commissioner of Revenue. "It requires a great deal of philosophy to observe once what may be seen every day." --Rousseau. New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, Franklin Square. 1876. PREFACE. The origin of this little book is as follows: Some months ago, the expediency was suggested to the author, by certain prominent friends of hard money in this country, of preparing for popular reading--and possibly for political campaign purposes--a little tract, or essay, in which the elementary principles underlying the important subjects of money and currency should be presented and illustrated from the simplest A B C stand-point. That such a work was desirable, and that none of the very great number of speeches and essays already published on these topics in all respects answered the existing requirement, was admitted; but how to invest subjects, so often discussed, and so commonly regarded as dry and abstract, with sufficient new interest to render them at once attractive and intelligible to those whose tastes disincline them to close reasoning and investigation, was a matter not easy to determine. At last the old idea--recognized in fables, allegories, and parables--of making a story the medium for communicating instruction, suggested itself; and, in accordance with the suggestion, a remote island community has been imagined, in which, starting from conditions but one remove from barbarism, but gradually rising to a high degree of civilization, the progress, the use, and the abuse of the instrumentalities and mechanism of exchange--through barter, money, and currency--have been traced consecutively; and the effect of the application of not a few of the most popular fiscal recommendations and theories of the day practically worked out and recorded. And, in carrying out this scheme, the reader will not fail to perceive, by reference to the marginal notes accompanying the text, that hardly an absurdity in reference to exchange, money, or currency can be imagined, which somewhere and at some time has not had its exact counterpart in actual history or experience.