Noah Smithwick; J. Stromberg

51 New Orleans. He immediately became the object of resentment on the part of the older, established workers for being too productive. Cautioned to go slower, he responded, "Our employer pays me for my time: do I not owe him all that I am capable of doing in that time?" The other workers' attitude was that "'No sprig of a boy must presume to set the pace for us,' and so I was forced to slow down and drift with the tide. This was Labour Unionism in its incipiency." Smithwick, born in 1808 in North Carolina, went on to Texas-then part of Mexico-as soon as he could save enough money in New Orleans. He lived through the tumultuous days of the Texan Revolution, the Texas Republic, the Mexican-American War, and the secession crisis of 1861. At that time, the "integral nationalism" that he shared with Governor Sam Houston led him to leave Texas for the more favorable climate of California, where he remained. His eyesight failing him, he dictated his recollections to his daughter in 1899. Smithwick died the next year.

Willingnessto Work Noah Smithwick's life may well stand as an example of what is rapidly disappearing from the American character. Willing to work hard and with a natural mechanical ability, he tried numerous enterprises: blacksmith, gunsmith, soldier, mill owner, critic of land fraud (per haps the first big "industry" in Texas), inde pendent inventor of the circular saw, and 52 THE FREEMAN/IDEAS ON LIBERTY • JULY 1999 diplomat. (He negotiated an Indian treaty, promptly violated by both sides.) He would undertake any kind of honest work, which probably explains why he was never much of a politician. As an active and ambitious pioneer, Smith wick calls to mind the "venturesome conserv atives" of the Jacksonian period (to use Mar vin Meyer's phrase). A canny observer of, and participant in, the economic life of early (Anglo) Texas, he makes sharp comments on many of its aspects. Alongside his interesting passages on ethnic and cultural groups he came to know of (Mexicans, Indians, blacks, Germans, and Mormons), some of his best material and most amusing stories focus on the nature of money.

Smithwick describes the crisis caused in the Texas Republic by the government's issue of inflationary "scrip" (a sort of constant with new regimes). In a textbook demonstration of Gresham's Law, coin (that is, real money) dis appeared. He recalls: "I received a hatful of new, crisp, one-dollar bills in payment for a horse lost in the San Saba Indian fight, which I immediately turned over to a creditor [!], without ever having folded them. People would almost rather have anything else than the commonwealth paper." In Travis County, people came up with an alternative: "Under those circumstances, we established a currency of our own, a kind of banking system as it were, which though unauthorized by law, met the local require ments. Horses were generally considered legal tender: but owing to the constant drain on the public treasury by the horse-loving Indian, that kind of currency became scarce, so we settled on the cow as the least liable to fluctuation." Private bills were written against cows (valued at $10 per animal in real money). The system apparently worked well enough as long as it was needed. (Yearlings were also used as a medium of exchange.) Meet "John Doe"

An even better example of Smithwick's empirical Texan monetary views is found in his discussion of counterfeiting in the Red lands just before Texan independence. In Noah Smithwick 1831 he ran afoul of the law in San Felipe. Texas was still part of Mexico, and Smithwick thought it best to shove off to the Redlands, which bordered on the American state of Louisiana. There he came to know the local counterfeiter, on whose premises he worked, although he never took part himself in the counterfeiting portion of "John Doe's" busi ness. Doe's product was a copper-sandwich version of the Mexican silver dollar, calling vividly to mind the "Lyndon Johnson" dimes and quarters introduced sometime in the mid 1960s. Smithwick says of Doe: "There was noth ing of the desperado about him. On the con trary, he was pleasant and peaceable and gen erally liked, and, so far from being looked upon as a malefactor, was considered a public benefactor, in that he furnished the only cur rency to which the people had access. The country could not be said to be on either a gold or silver basis, copper being the basis of Doe's coinage.... "

Doe would occasionally call in his worn sandwich dollars and restamp them with a veneer of silver. He made doubloons as well. Clearly in touch with the policy debates of his NOAH SMITHWICK: PIONEER TEXAN AND MONETARY CRITIC 53 last years, Smithwick remarks: "Doe's curren cy furnishes a good example of the practical working of the populist idea: it was all right in domestic transactions, but when they attempt ed to discharge foreign [that is, non-East Texan] obligations with it, it got them into trouble." Doe did not do well when he extended his operations into western Louisiana. On one occasion, however, he won a sizeable bet by stamping a pure silver coin with the same cracked die he used for his copper-sandwich coins and sending a crony into a saloon to spend it. A skeptical bartender announced that the coin was clearly counterfeit, but put to the test, this coin of course proved to be unadul terated silver. (Doe won $500 on the bet.) With this windfall, Doe removed himself west of the Sabine River, where, as Smithwick puts it, "his efforts were more appreciated."

As a moneysmith, says Smithwick, Doe "added materially to the wealth of the colonies . . . by restamping the old ham mered dollars, a single blow of the hammer adding 25 cents to the value of each. There were thousands of them thus rehabilitated." (There was apparently no debasing with copper in this operation.) Doe was finally put out of business by counterfeiters in Louisiana, who printed up fake U.S. bank notes and floated them in East Texas. Smith wick observes: "Paper and ink being cheap er even than copper, Doe's currency was given the go-by." Copper, after all, was fair ly valuable and Doe, at one time, had to break up a still to keep his copper-sandwich undertaking going. Smithwick's experience with the counter feiter suggests a corollary to Gresham's Law: worse money drives out merely bad money. It is refreshing to read the memoirs of a pioneer who could grasp an essential point about the nature of money and use it to cast light on his times. 0 r-----------------------------, I Super-selleroneconomicliberty-updated!

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