The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1903-12-04
TRADE WITHOUT MONEY.
business transactions Carried On in
a Big City without the
Aid of Cash.

When, the other day. a woman passen-
ger on an Elston avenue car, finding her
self without change, paid her fare to the
conductor by giving him can of to-
matoes, and the story got in the papers,
there was much establishment and not
a little laughter, says the Chicago Tirb-
une.
Yet thousands of dollars worth of
business is done in Chicago every year
upon the same terms, and many tran
saction which would swamp some cash
stores is carried out without the ex-
penditure of nickel. The custom, which
is deeply imbedded in some parts of
Chicago, rose in one of two ways.
At the Office of City Sealer Quinn,
where weights and measures are known
like books, it is said that the habit of
barter comes to Chicago from New Eng
land. A man who has hotel out in
Milwaukee avenue, and who is the center
of a trading population in which money
is seldom used, said that he believes the
barter and exchange custom, as used in
Chicago, came in after the Chicago fire
and was a product of those disordered
days.
1t is out in Milwaukee avenue, toward
Dunning, down in Blue Island, and west
ward, near Hawthorne and Clyde, that
much of this moneyless commerce is car
ried out Yet so close to town as Hay
market square many deals are put
through without the necessity on the
part of either the buyer or the seller OF
putting his hand in his pocket.
Money among some parts of Chicago's
cosmopolitan population is used solely
as a medium of saving. In some parts
of the Italian and Chinese quarters a
dollar spent means that $40 or $40 have
been laid away. Many of these residents
of Chicago are transients. They look
forward always to the time when they
may go into the ticket office and buy
passage back to their native land.
In the businesses in which they are
engaged here they usually have little
capital except their labor invested. They
sell fruit or brooms or rugs or they shine
shoes or do laundry work or sell tea in
small quantities. 1t follows that never
at one time have they much money on
hand for spending purposes.
They cut their living expenses down
to minimum. Those Industrious statis-
ticians who calculate to the penny on
how a family can live on $3.50 a week
and who indulge in similar mathematical
feats, would be surprised, to see how
many thrifty Greeks or economical Ital-
ians can live BEAUTIFULLY and happily
through day which has seen only bit
of dry bread and piece of bacon as its
table luxuries.
These people, who but tarry within
our gates, always live in neighborhoods
which are populated mostly by their
fellow countrymen. When they need
clothes they get them from the man
whose relatives they knew in Naples or
Athens With shoes, drinks, cigars, med
icines it is the same.
They deal, many of them, with their
own people, and not always for cash
They have something, some part of their
small stock, or some share of their labor
which they willingly exchange for what
the other man has.
This trading among some strata of the
aliens is done for the most part without
the use of money Most of the money
that comes in is put into the channels
skin bag, which is kept back of the
loose panel in the walls, under the board
under the bed or in the safety deposit
vault, which is sometimes the only thing
for which money is actually paid.
But Americans who have lived here al
their lives, and who expect to die here
do not always pay money for what they
ct. in larger way they are like the
woman in the Elston avenue car who
paid a can of tomatoes for car fare. Many
of them are farmers. They drive into
town in the morning with load of prod
uce. Their first stop is at the hotel
Never at a downtown hotel, but at one
of those countless farmers homes" OF
farmers rests" that dot many of the
outskirts
The hotel keeper often does not make
out his bill in dollars and cents. He lets
the farmer put his wagon and his horses
in the hotel shed and he charges him sc
many pecks of apples or so many bush.
els of corn.
While the farmer is out selling his
produce his wife, or perhaps his daugh.
ter, may be trading needlework or but.
ter for some article which is needed out
on the farm. Most of the money that is
used. comes into the farmers family. II
does not go out of it.
1t is useless to deny that hundreds OF
prosperous farmers who come into town
each day spend money and spend it free.
y. But the percentage of those who
cannot afford money and who exchange
rather than sell or buy is high. Ever
many of those who have bank accounts
prefer to do business in the old way anC
keep their money for themselves.
That this custom is neither the result
entirely of foreign nor of rural environ
ment it is only necessary to turn in this
paper to the for sale or exchange column
There will be found the advertisements
of many city bred men and women who
have some possession for which they
want another. Money is not the nub OF
these transactions. They are cases of
genuine barter and exchange