



Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
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                        ROBINSON CRUSOE'S MONEY;
                                Or, the
             Remarkable Financial Fortunes and Misfortunes
                     of a Remote Island Community.



                                   By
                            DAVID A. WELLS,
              Late U. S. Special Commissioner of Revenue.



                                    "It requires a great deal of
                                    philosophy to observe once
                                    what may be seen every day."
                                                        --Rousseau.



                               New York:
                     Harper & Brothers, Publishers,
                            Franklin Square.
                                 1876.







PREFACE.


The origin of this little book is as follows: Some months ago, the
expediency was suggested to the author, by certain prominent friends
of hard money in this country, of preparing for popular reading--and
possibly for political campaign purposes--a little tract, or essay,
in which the elementary principles underlying the important subjects
of money and currency should be presented and illustrated from the
simplest A B C stand-point. That such a work was desirable, and that
none of the very great number of speeches and essays already published
on these topics in all respects answered the existing requirement,
was admitted; but how to invest subjects, so often discussed, and so
commonly regarded as dry and abstract, with sufficient new interest
to render them at once attractive and intelligible to those whose
tastes disincline them to close reasoning and investigation, was a
matter not easy to determine.

At last the old idea--recognized in fables, allegories, and
parables--of making a story the medium for communicating instruction,
suggested itself; and, in accordance with the suggestion, a remote
island community