Excerpt from Catalogue of Coins of the United States, 1928
The scarcity of money in the colonies of N orth America, except the Spanish settlements in the Southwest, was a cause of constant distress, for not only was the incipient foreign commerce of the colonies greatly hampered thereby, but, what was even more annoying, the domestic trade was carried on with the greatest difficulty for the want of money, especially coins of small denominations. This made itself felt imme diately on the advent of prosperous conditions in the colonies early in the seventeenth century, and at no period for the ensuing two centuries was there any relief from the embarrassing question. In their endeavors to solve the problems of a standard of values and circulating medium the colonists resorted to nearly every means which had been known to primitive man prior to the invention of the coin. Among these make shifts, barter must have been the most common method of disposing of and procuring goods. The use of staple products as a means of express ing values and also as money in ordinary business transactions soon became of necessity a general practice throughout the colonies.
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