RETURN TO BARTER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21473, 22 April 1933, Page 3 (Supplement)

RETURN TO BARTER

One of the most illuminating retrogressions of tho economic crisis is the return of barter as a means of satisfying human needs for which ready money is unavailable. Many isolated instances of resort to this primitive method have been reported, but perhaps its most striking form has appeared in somo of tho western states of America. It began in the autumn of 1931, in Utah, where a handful of unemployed business men set themselves to work out a plan whereby idlo labour in Salt Lake City could be exchanged for the products' of Utah farms. Tho response exceeded all expectations, and soon similar exchanges for goods and service were being arranged among urban groups. Workers who had toiled on farms and hart been paid in vegetables, fruit and grain, exchanged their surplus for haircuts, dental or'medical attention. Tho movement spread to Idaho. In January last year, it was organised as tho Natural Development Association, with headquarters in Salt Lake City, and branches in Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona. To facilitate the process of barter, it has devised a form of scrip, representing the value of product or service which the holder exchanges for it. It is then exchangeable for whatever product or service of equal value, the holder desires. When thus once exchanged it is destroyed. It cannot be hoarded or monopolised or used to earn interest.