Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1901 — PRIMITIVE CHINESE MONEY. [ARTICLE]

PRIMITIVE CHINESE MONEY.

Era Whan a Workman Waa Paid With a Hatch* c. The little brass cash, the Chinese coins, the lineal descendants, In unbroken order, of the bronze axe of remote Celestial ancestors. From the regular hatchet to the modern coin one can trace a distinct, if somewhat broken, succession, so that it is im- • possible to say where the one leaves off and the other begins. Here Is how this curious pedigree first worked itself out: In early times, before the coin ducted between producer and consumer with metal Implements, as it still is in Central Africa at the present day. At first the Chinese in that unsophisticated age were content to use real hatchets for this commercial purpose, but after a time, with the profound mercantile instinct of their race, it occurred to some of them that when a man wanted half a hatchet’s worth of goods ho might as well pay for them with half a hatchet. Still, as It would be a pity to spoil a good working Implement by cutting it in two, the worthy Ah Sin ingeniously compromised the matter by making tin hatchets of the usual size and shape, but far too slender for practical usage. By so doing he Invented coin, and, what Is more, he invented it far earlier than the claimants to that proud distinction, the Lydians, whose electrum staters were first struck In the seventh century B. C. —Cornhill Magazine.