The Golden Earth
by
[Macmillan, $3.50]
ARTHUR POUND’S latest book, The Golden Earth, makes a delectable tale of the rise of real-estate values on Manhattan Island in New York City. A candidate for a doctor’s degree might have utilized the theme in partial fulfillment of requirements. Henry George would have been inspired by it to found a system of economics and ethics and would have issued a call to action. The book that we have does not slight the facts, and the author is not unaware of their implications; but he is a writer with rare gifts, and he keeps well to his sufficient business of narration.
The story begins with the Manhattan Indians, ‘a weak and lazy lot of humans’ who ‘had become wampum specialists.’ Hunting was not good on the island, but suitable shells were to be picked up on the beaches, and the labor of making these into perforated disks was not arduous. With this wampum the Manhattan Indians ‘could purchase nearly everything they needed from the other tribes.’ ‘A religious veneration attached to these noble evidences of wealth, which straightway became part of the tribal reserves surrounded by taboos and solemnly placed in the keeping of the most venerable and trusted sachems.’ The Indians had no experience of buying and selling land and did not comprehend the nature of a deal in real estate. They sold their island to the Dutch for trade goods valued at twenty-four dollars. Since the Indians of the hinterland would exchange furs for wampum, and furs could be exchanged in Europe for gold coins that the white man valued as the Indians valued shell disks, the Dutch entered the wampum trade in a large way. ’They worked with improved tools and methods. Also they worked longer hours and at a stiffer pace, scamping on materials and craftsmanship in order to achieve quantity production.’
The wampum currency ultimately lost the respect in which formerly it had been held, but Manhattan has had the skill to continue supplying the hinterland with acceptable currencies and securities. The earth of Manhattan is rocky and sterile. The island does not produce the milk and honey with which it flows. Such things come to it, for the equivalent of wampum, from a hinterland where too many business farmers produce too much milk and honey for their own good. Manhattan Island is the world’s best example of site values. Decisions there ‘must be made quickly’; if a man deliberates, the ground rent gets him. Poets and craftsmen, who have difficulty with schedules, must live in the country. The story as Arthur Pound tells it will entertain the reader and will give him much to think about after his reading.
C. F. ANSLEY