Excerpt from Catalogue of Coins, Tokens, and Medals: In the Numismatic Collection of the Mint of the United States at Philadelphia, Pa
The scarcity of money in the colonies of North 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 hamp ered 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 immediately 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 makeshifts, barter must have been the most common method of disposing of and procuring goods. The use of staple products as a means of expressing values and also as money in ordinary business transactions soon became of necessity a gen eral practice throughout the colonies.
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