A New Perception of Cotton

Imagine if you are dropped into a world where there is no money, only trading. As expected, you are started. When you bring this issue to the native people, they look at you strangely before asking you to explain this “money” idea. You look around frantically, hoping to see something that would help. Your eyes catch something white on the horizon. Large fields of cotton are haphazardly strewn across the hilly area, making a sea of clouds. “There!” you almost want to shout. You point to the fields and tell how if you were to pick this cotton and then give it to each other as payment for an item then that would be money. They look between you and the fields, some with pity while others just shook their heads. The only one that listened was a little girl, about seven, with a ragged shirt and short brown hair. “So you could get anything with this ‘money’?” she asks. You nod your head and watch in excitement as her eyes light up. She runs to the fields and grabs an armful of cotton and then brings it to a merchant. She asks for something sweet from the vendor and asks how much he wants for it. He says the leg of a chair. The little girl lays out the cotton and says that this should be enough. The man looks in question before looking at you. The villagers that were around you start to understand. Finally someone mumbled why this “money” was so important. Universal payment.

Years have gone by and the society has grown to accept this money. But they seem to have grown stubborn when it came to determining what money is. You explain that money could be either plastic or paper and it has pictures on it. They would laugh and point to the cotton field all the while exclaiming “That is the money you taught us to value!” Finally, you gave up. The entire system of cotton collection and distribution within the world is relatively interesting and easy. It was only a few days of the village using money for the government, which was made up of a group of three people from all the twenty provinces in the world, to notice them. They interviewed the villages and yourself for answers. “Why do you pay your taxes with these?” one of them would ask as they hold up a bundle of cotton. “Because it is money,” they would all answer as if it was common sense. The investigators soon began to see the potential of this invention and scurried off to their superiors. The practice spread within weeks. Those who would grow the cotton only enjoyed the feeling of being rich for a month before the government seized all the cotton and cotton seeds. The government began growing this money and distributed an even amount to each person in the world. Along with this money came attached a decree that stated this was federally approved currency. 

Counterfeiting of course soon followed. The black market scrounged for whatever cotton seeds there was and sold them to high bidders. The counterfeiters would grow the seeds until the cotton was ripe and then pick the cotton and seeds. The government, as expected, wasn’t pleased. They debated for months until they devised a plan. They sent out a message to turn in all cotton balls so that they could redistribute another form of cotton. This form had the cotton completely encased in plastic that was hard and very durable. If you were to squint, you could see lines skillful engraved onto the inside of the plastic. It was of the governments seal that had been morphed into the shoots of cotton. The original cotton bundles were labeled invalid after a certain amount of time and the counterfeiting was halted.

Here you are, years later with people asking you for your opinion on the monetary inventions they had. One being a way to compress cotton into sheets in order to create and easier way to store them. These sheet would finally have pictures on them, an idea that you have been pressing for awhile. When asked what you would put on it, you would smile to yourself and say “How about a little girl with an armful of cotton.”