Overview: The village economy was based on a form of debit
and credit bookkeeping known in the nineteenth century as bartering. In the
barter economy local merchants, craftsmen, and farmers maintained records of
transactions and trusted their neighbors enough to allow a line of credit.
Customers would settle accounts with goods and labor and—less often—with
cash. This lesson uses Donald Hall’s Ox-Cart Man and a nineteenth-century
daybook to illustrate the barter economy.
Focusing Questions
How did farmers, merchants, and artisans trade for goods and
labor without cash?
How did the barter economy work?
Topical Understandings
Farmers, merchants, and artisans bartered their goods and
labor.
Bartering was a form of bookkeeping that allowed farmers,
merchants, and artisans to provide each other with lines of credit.
The season of the year dictated what was being traded in the
New England village.
Background Information
Materials:
Picture Book Connection: Donald Hall, Ox-Cart Man
Primary Source: Daybook, December 25, 1848, and worksheet
Procedures:
- Ask your class what they
think bartering is. Ask what happens if one person has something to trade
that is worth more than what the other person has. What do you do?
- Read Ox-Cart Man to your students. Afterwards, make a list of what
the Ox-Cart Man traded. What did he sell? What did he buy? Explain that even though the story shows
the Ox-Cart Man with some coins in his pocket, there was actually very
little cash in New England at this time. People traded with each other
instead.
- Ox-Cart Man is told from the point of view of someone who
would have been a customer at the general store. What if the story were
about the storekeeper? What might his day have been like? What did he sell
and what did he buy or trade? When
the Ox-Cart Man came to the general store, the storekeeper would have
opened a big 2-columned account book and listed everything the Ox-Cart Man
sold to him in a credit column and everything the Ox-Cart Man bought from
him in a debit column.
Create a 2-column chart on the
board and list everything the Ox-Cart Man bought and sold in the appropriate debit
and credit columns.
- Merchants also kept daybooks, which were like diaries listing every transaction that happened over the day. If someone came in to sell, say, pork, the merchant would write down the amount of pork and how much it was worth. He would put a big CR next to the entry for the pork because the customer would now have credit with the store. If someone came in to buy some fabric, the merchant would list the amount of fabric and how much it was worth. He would put a big DR next to the fabric entry because the customer now owed him that much money. If the customer was a farmer, he would pay back his debt by bringing a farm good to sell to the store at another time.
Provide students with the December
daybook page and worksheet.
Have them circle all the DR
transactions in red and all the CR transactions in green. Use the worksheet to categorize
what was being traded in this village store.
- Return to the class
definition of bartering. Can they expand their definition?
No comments:
Post a Comment