Coined His Own Money

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 5

Coined His Own Money

Trials of a Papuan Trader Jack McLaren, the novelist, who lived as a trader for many years among the savages of Northern Australia and the South Seas, writes of the time he was a coirer: To traders the most troublesome feature of the spread of civilisation in the South Seas is the replacement i simple barter by the use of money. One difficulty is the natives’ limited sense of arithmetic. For example, a native with £1 to spend will first a $k the trader to change it into shillings, one of which he will then hand back and say. “Calico.” Receiving it. V.o will produce another shilling and say. “Tobacco.” and so on. paving for each article as he gets it and thus keeping an exact account of his finances. For the trader it is a slow and irritating business. It also necessitates keeping large quantities of shillings, as natives will often save them up. At a trading store I had in the Gulf of Papua I ran short of shillings, and to meet the difficulty instituted a coinage of my own—discs which I cut from old kero-sene-tins and stamped X with a handdie —a scheme which worked well, as the discs were redeemable at no other store but mine. But I had to give it up at last, for a suspicion that more discs were coming in than I had made led to the discovery that someone had stolen the die and was coining on me! Further, a native wanting an article for which he has not enough money will waste the trader’s time by coming perhaps a dozen times a day to inquire its price—in the hope that the trader will forget the original amount and make it cheaper! As he is utterly ignorant of writing, the price-tickets mean nothing to the native, nor 's he know they mean anything to the trader. Now and again in u case of this kind I have, for a joke, increased the amount, much to the native’s indignation and concern. Incidentally, the favourite purchase these days is a gramophone; but records of songs and string orchestras are not wanted. Jass may be primitive music; but these primitive islanders hate it. What they want is brassband music, with plenty of drums, and the louder the better.

They usually buy with the machine only one record, which they will play and play, hour after hour, day and night, until not only does it cease to give forth a tune, but gets past even the scratching stage and makes no sound at all. Then they will buy another record and proceed to play it to death in the same way.