Island Dwellers Back On Potato Currency After Trial Of Money System

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 56, 16 June 1948, Page 7

Island Dwellers Back On Potato Currency After Trial Of Money System

Money is a flop—useless, ugly, and a nuisance. That verdict comes from Tristan da Cunha, Britain’s islet speck in the South Atlantic, 2000 miles west of Cape Town. The 210 islanders have given it a three-year trial—have got rid of the stuff. They saw money for the first time in 1942 when a British naval party landed to erect a wartime radiometeorological station and took ashore £SOOO in England and South African currency to hire labour. Patiently, politely, the islanders listened as an officer explained all about the coloured paper and pretty rounded pieces of metal, went on to uncover some of the mysteries of banking, and praised the delights of working hard to hoard piles of the new stuff. They were not impressed, but for three years humoured the visitors, accepted the stuff as payment instead of potatoes. Last year all but a handful of the Men-Who-Use-Money sailed away. Very soon all the money was in the island’s brand new Post Office Savings Bank (except a few pieces saved as war souvenirs) because that was what the *Man-Who-Introduced-Money had told them to do. Having given the monetary system as practised by the outer world a fair trial the islanders are solid that it doesn’t make sense. You can’t eat it; it doesn’t have roots, so it won’t grow; away with it! Tristan has gone back to her potato currency. Someone does a job for you; right, you reward him with some potatoes, something to eat.