Scary Economy + Great Neighbors + Ingenuity = Together We Prosper?

I'll mow your lawn if you hang my sheets.

I'll bake you a pie after you clear my snow.

It's nothing Iowa neighbors haven't been doing for hundreds of years. The Native Americans traded food for furs and negotiated complex trade agreements and treaties so that possibly they could co exist with the newcomers.

In this past century we've increasingly moved to a cash or credit only economy because delicious as a homemade pie is, it won't pay my utility bill, and nice as it is of you to hang my sheets to dry in the sunshine, it won't do anything to cover my rent.

Reframing our Thoughts on Trade and Barter

What if we reframed our thinking?

Hanging my sheets won't pay my bills, but it will free up my time to do some paid work, if there was any on my desk to do, while still giving my family the inimitable scent and feel of sunshine-infused sheets at bedtime.

Maybe a fruit pie is a delicious frill, but a chicken or beef pie will feed my family dinner, saving me a trip to Fareway to shop for the ingredients, and save me the money I would have spent on them.

It Worked During the Great Depression

A small Lodge in rural Virginia established a barter system to help its community through the hard times of the 1930s.

Brotherhood, Relief, and Truth--there was never a more urgent need to apply Masonic tenets than during the Great Depression. Members of a rural Lodge in south-central Virginia, Payton--Coles Lodge No. 54 of Sutherlin, Virginia, responded by creating and maintaining a unique barter system among all of the residents of their community.

Almost every family had a vegetable garden, and the wives of several Lodge members held periodic canning sessions in their homes or in the local elementary school on Saturdays. One of these wives was a teacher at the school. Canned goods were divided among the community participants with some reserved for the aged, sick, and disabled. One enterprising Lodge member cultivated orchards of apples, peaches, pears, cherries, and other fruits. He also had numerous hives of honeybees which pollinated his fruit trees and provided large amounts of honey to supplement the family's income.

It was this unlimited variety of consumer products that enabled members of the Masonic Lodge to create and maintain a community barter system to minimize and help relieve the effects of the depression among all of the residents, regardless of their station in life. Individual or family needs were reciprocally satisfied by the exchange of goods, services, or labor. For example, if a poultry farmer needed wheat or cracked corn to feed his flock, he might exchange eggs or chickens with some other farmer who had an abundant supply of wheat and corn. Similarly, someone who raised pork could likely exchange bacon or ham for fruit, with the owner of the orchards. The dairy farmer frequently traded butter and milk for hay to feed his herd of milk cows. And so it was with the Masonic barter system between residents of the Sutherlin community.

This successful barter system, created and maintained by members of the Lodge, continued through the Depression and well into the late 1930s and early 1940s. How it was continuously supervised and administered remains to this day a mystery known only to the involved members. Peace and harmony obviously prevailed throughout this time, since no one ever recalled an incident in which disagreement or ill will occurred regarding any attributed unequal value of exchanged goods, services, or labor.

Modern financial controls, along with government regulations, have been created to prevent any future depression of the magnitude experienced during the Great Depression. We certainly hope so! Nevertheless, family, religious, and community values have seriously diminished. Should such a depression, somehow, ever occur again, would these same tenets of Masonry be as unselfishly applied (or even legally allowed to be applied) as they were in that small, rural Virginia Lodge, almost three quarters of a century ago? That is a question that today's Masons, I hope, will never have to answer.

I tell this story not to glorify the Masons. I have no particular opinion about Masons except that my paternal grandparents were Mason and Eastern Star and my father in law is a Mason and they all seem to have derived some greater good from their involvement in their Lodges, and that my father declined to become a Mason in spite of my grandpa's urging because he perceived they were racist and/or anti-Semetic.

Whatever the truth about Freemasonry, any community can apply the principles we learn from the unselfish actions of this particular lodge in this particular place and time: every community member has something to contribute and our contributions distributed equitably will help everyone prosper in scary times.

The past has passed its prime.

Pure market capitalism hasn't worked. It would have worked had we been able to trust everyone to act ethically and in the best interest of the common good, but sadly, we can't and greed has taken hold in unthinkable ways at the highest echelons of our society.

Here in the middle and downscale of the spectrum, we cannot depend on those in leadership to take care of us. We're smart and resourceful enough to take care of ourselves and we're much better at meeting our own needs.

I'll say it again -- the rugged individualism and pioneer toughness that built this region won't sustain us in this situation. We must come out of our homes and into the community square, bringing whatever it is we have to offer to lay on the table and utilize for our common well-being.

Times Are Different Now

Times are different now. We have the advantage of advanced technology and communication to make bartering with one another a whole lot easier.

In the towns of Port Townsend, Port Angeles and Sequim, Everett, Olympia and Hansville, Washington, they've traded over $530,000 in goods and services in the last three and one-half years, most of that in the last two, everything from farmer's produce to child care to lawn service to even an automobile.

The system in Washington equates a unit of work with "Life Dollars" -- equal to $10.00 -- an hour of work on a basic living wage scale. The citizens built the system on the tenet that need is the perfect international currency.

The therapist and economics professor who designed the system says while you'd think people would try to milk the system and rip others off, that human behavior changes radically when money is taken out of the equation. In the three and a half years the system has operated in Hansville, there has never been a problem with people overdrawing their Life Dollar accounts or trying to gain more for themselves at the expense of others.

Closer to Home

Just up the highway in south Minneapolis, the Pillsbury Neighborhood Services has operated a Community Barter System since 1995. In CBN, time is not money, but credits. An hour of service earns one credit in the barter system. Participants start with five credits so they can use the services right away. Every time a participant performs a service, s/he receives one credit per hour of work. Later that same participant can use the earned credits to receive an impressive variety of services from bike repair to massage therapy to tax preparation.

Everyone completes a satisfaction survey after each barter. Credits earned and spent are recorded on a data base. Members receive periodic reports of their status within the system, much like bank statements.

Could We Do it Here in Iowa?

The combination of massive layoffs, a declining economy, and talented, hardworking individuals makes this seem like the perfect place to try it.

With effective bartering, you could save money on things you'd ordinarily have to buy, thus freeing up more to keep current on essential bills like rent or mortgage, utilities, health care, and tithe if you attend church and/or are a person of faith (you can tithe to God's kingdom in ways alternative to giving it all to a church, just don't tell my pastor friends I said that).

Cooperation is the only way I can think of to generate prosperity in a scary time. We can go beyond bartering to a community food co-op (there's already a great one with Angel Food Ministries through First Christian Church here in Spencer) more clothing exchanges (perhaps one focusing on gently used, stylish teen clothing or one for gently used career/work clothing for adults), more community feasts funded by free will offerings or better yet donations of time and goods -- just more of everything we work on together.

Am I crazy or might this really work to get us through?

Don't answer the crazy part, but I'd welcome your opinions below on whether our community can come together on this level to get everyone through.