Folkways Author:William Graham Sumner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE Tools, Arts, Language, Money Processes and artifacts of the food supply. — Fishing. — Methods of fishing. — The mys... more »tic element. — Religion and industry. — Artifacts and freaks of nature. — Forms of stone axes. — How stone implements are made. — How arrowheads are made. — How stone axes are used. — Acculturation or parallelism. — Fire-making tools. — Psychophysical traits of primitive man.— Language.— Language and magic. — Language is a case of folkways.— Primitive dialects. — Taking up and dropping language.— Pigeon dialects. — How languages grow. — Money. — Intergroup and intragroup money.— Predominant wares.— Intragroup money from property; inter- group money from trade. — Shell and bead money. — Token money. — Selection of a predominant ware. — Stone money in Melanesia. — Plutocratic effects of money. — Money on the northwest coast of North America. — Wampumpeag and roanoke.— Ring money. Use of metal. — The evolution of money. — The ethical functions of money. 122. Processes and artifacts of the food supply. The processes and the artifacts which are connected with food supply offer us the purest and simplest illustrations of the development of folkways. They are not free from the admixture of superstition and vanity, but the element of expediency predominates in them. It is reported of the natives of New South Wales that a man will lie on a rock with a piece of fish in his hand, feigning sleep. A hawk or crow darts at the fish, but is caught by the man. It is also reported of Australians that a man swims under water, bieathing through a reed, approaches ducks, pulls one under water by the legs, wrings its neck, and so secures a number of them.1 If these stories can be accepted with confidence, they may well furnish us a starting ...« less