TRADE BY BARTER

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17945, 24 November 1932, Page 2

TRADE BY BARTER

A NEW SIMPLICITY REBIRTH IN U.S. RURAL COMMUNITIES Trade by barter is growing among rural communities in the United States. The rebirth of this ancient method of commerce is commented on by Mr. C. M. Wilson, writing in The Commonweal. lie states that the trading of farm produce directly for needed merchandise is returning to everyday usage in thousands of rural and semi-rural communities throughout the United 'States.

Explaining the reasons for what may seem a strange reversion in this highspeed age, Mr. Wilson says: “It is a specific emanation of a general trend toward greater simpliciity in everyday commerce. To-day, most productive economics are slackening their pell-mell forward pace. The current depression, with its glutted farm markets, its increase in number of marginal farms and decrease in marginal cash, gives a very logical background for this reversion to an older school of productive economy. LOCAL EXCHANGE “With all the turmoil of high finance and industry, the farmer is still taking tho slim cut of tho economic pic. The price of his products still ranges from 20 to 40 per cent, below tho prevailing level of manufactured goods, and despite the tribulation of big-city business the actual flow of cash is vastly more retarded in rural business than it is in urban business. “What with bank failures and falling markets, it behoves the farmer to work toward a practice of local exehango which carries a diminished need for cash and paper credit.” Mr. Wilson continues:— “The institution of barter presents a number of current and obvious advantages. “It saves unnecessary transportation and storage of various agricultural commodities. Tt whittles down the middleman s profits. A ci'op-for-crop or erop-for-goods exchange tends to relieve the discrepancy between farm and commodity price, to serve as a tonic for tho prevailing dilemma of farm products, and, finally, to verify and to rerheck estimates of relative value.” THE COUNTRY MILL The revival is being furthered in more than 2600 farming counties by agricultural county agents, according to reports -to the United States Department of Agriculture. Furthermore, says Mr. Wilson, “the country mill, another longproven agency of barter, is returning to contemporary reality. Even the toll system, where grinding charges are paid in grain, is returning. “ I here is no reason to believe that barter will command all domestic trade,, or that various other systems of exchange will wither before itu rising might.

‘‘But it is an expedient current measure, a move toward greater simplicity in rural business and toward a checking and reclassification of certain basic i allies. A more direct basis for exchange and for estimates of relative value may have the same cleansing and rejuvenating influence upon the congestions of modern business that more simple diet and wavs of living would exert upon some of its befuddled exponents.”