Scarce things, therefore, were just as much prized by primitive people as they are prized by civilized people to-day. It was these scarce things, therefore, that could be exchanged for an abundance of things, because no one valued what could easily be got and what all could have. There was a time when iron was scarce. As iron, too, was most useful for a great variety of purposes and as its utility was constantly showing itself, its scarcity, added to its usefulness, made it increasingly prized and valued. A ring of iron for a crown was of greater worth once than are the diamond-studded crowns of present day monarchs, and iron was at one time scarcer than diamonds and rubies are now, and a man in possession of a little iron could exchange that possession for a great quantity of cattle with the man who had more cattle than he knew what to do with. Cattle, therefore, were what we call cheap and iron was dear, the primitive idea being, as it still is, that cheapness consists in much and dearness in little, irrespective of their values in preserving life. Iron was dear because it was scarce, cattle were cheap because they were plentiful. But man cannot live by iron, though he can live on cattle. Judged, therefore, from the standpoint of life-preservation, cattle should be more precious than iron; but judged from the standpoint of envy and vanity, iron was, as gold now is, of greater value than cattle. The one preserves life, the other pride, and here we see some components of the foundation on which the economic fabric has been reared. A savage with a little iron and no live stock was considered wealthier and more enviable than the man with no iron and a vast quantity of live stock. The man in possession of the iron knew that he could get as much live stock as he wanted by parting with all or only a portion of his iron, and when he exchanged a portion of his iron for cattle he actually parted with money. The iron and the cattle were money--the iron was the sovereign and the cattle the pence in those days. Now, the iron being scarce and being highly valued by the community on whose land it was found, a greater value was conferred upon it in time by law. The king and his counsellors of those days enacted that a certain quantity of iron should discharge so much taxes or redeem so much debt, that the Government would accept it in payment of taxes and in liquidation of debt, thereby absolving the payer from all legal responsibilities and penalties. From being merely an instrument of custom iron was raised to the higher function of being a legal instrument. It was given a certain arbitrary value, the value being expressed in the amount of taxes it should represent and in the amount of debt it should legally discharge. Great importance lies in the conception that the legal, apart from the custom value, was purely arbitrary.