Chapter XIII: The Volume of Money and the Volume of Trade—Trade and Speculation

IN proving that an increase of money must proportionately increase prices, it is necessary to prove that the volume of trade is independent of the quantity of money and credit instruments by means of which trade is carried on. Money on the one hand, and quantity of goods to be exchanged on the other, are the two great independent magnitudes, whose equilibration mechanically fixes the average of prices. This notion, as to the essence of the quantity theory, finds expression in Taussig,¹ “The statement of a quantity theory in relation to prices assumes two independent variables: total money or purchasing power on the one hand, total supply of goods or volume of transactions on the other.” Taussig, though he would maintain that this independence holds, so far as money and trade are concerned, admits that it breaks down so far as trade and elastic bank credit, bank-notes and deposits, are concerned. Trade and elastic bank-credit are largely interdependent.² This concession on Taussig’s part means virtually giving up the quantity theory for Western Europe and the United States and Canada, though Taussig still sees something left of the quantity theory tendency in view of the “irregular and uncertain” connection which he finds between money and bank-credit.³ Fisher, however, makes no such surrender. He is quite as uncompromising as to the independence of deposits and trade as he is with reference to the independence of money and trade. He does, indeed, make the concession that increasing trade tends to increase deposits indirectly, by increasing the ratio of M′ to M, by modifying the habits of the people as to the use of checks as compared with cash (p. 165),¹ but he denies stoutly that there is any direct relation between them. (P. 168.) Trade acts only via a modification of the ratio between M and M′, and M still remains controlled, not by trade, but by quantity of money. As to any control over T by M′, he repudiates it explicitly, (P. 163.) Increasing M′, either through an increase of M. or through an increase in the normal ratio between M and M′, will have no effect on T,—or, for that matter, on the V′s. The introduction of credit, therefore, leaves the quantity theory intact: an increase of M, increasing M′ proportionately, leaving the V′s unchanged, and having no effect on T, must exhaust its influence on P, raising P proportionately, if the equation of exchange is to remain valid.

The argument set forth to prove that T is not influenced by M or M′ is as follows: “An inflation of the currency cannot increase the products of farms or factories, nor the speed of freight trains or ships. The stream of business depends on natural resources and technical conditions, not on the quantity of money. The whole machinery of production, transportation and sale is a matter of physical capacities and technique, none of which depend on the quantity of money. The only way in which quantities of trade appear to be affected by the quantity of money is by influencing trades accessory to the creation of money and to the money metal. . . . From a practical or statistical point of view they amount to nothing, for they could not add to nor subtract one-tenth of 1% from the general aggregate of trade.” (Loc. cit. p. 155. Italics mine.) Something similar is said on p. 62, where “transitional” influences of M on T are being discussed: “But the amount of trade is dependent, almost entirely, on other things than the quantity of currency, so that an increase of currency cannot, even temporarily, very greatly increase trade. In ordinarily good times practically the whole community is engaged in labor, producing, transporting, and exchanging goods. The increase of currency of a “boom” period cannot, of itself, increase the population, extend invention, or increase the efficiency of labor.¹ These factors pretty definitely limit the amount of trade that can reasonably be carried on. So, although the gains of the enterpriser-borrower may exert a psychological stimulus on trade, though a few unemployed may be employed, and some others in a few lines induced to work overtime, and although there may be some additional buying and selling which is speculative, yet almost the entire effect of an increase in deposits must be seen in a change in prices. Normally the entire effect would so express itself, but transitionally there will be also some increase in the Q’s.” (Pp. 62–63. Italics mine.)

Fisher is here exceedingly uncompromising, even where transitional periods are concerned, and it is not necessary, in order to do his position full justice, to make much distinction between “normal” and “transitional” effects in my counter-argument. I shall, however, take account of the distinction as I proceed, in justice to other, more moderate, quantity theorists.

It is a familiar doctrine that the quantity of money is irrelevant, that things go on in much the same way whether money is abundant or scarce, the only difference being that in the one case prices are high and in the other, low; that, in particular, it is a gross fallacy to connect the rate of interest with the amount of money, since (as many writers would put it) the rate of interest depends on the amount of capital rather than money. At the opposite extreme, we have writers like Brooks Adams (Law of Civilization and Decay), who see the fate of nations and the progress of civilization resting on the abundance or scarcity of money. Fisher takes the first position in its extremest form.¹

The truth, I think, is intermediate. The effects of the New World discoveries of gold and silver after the voyage of Columbus on trade and industry were tremendous. Trade was enormously increased. Walker, in his International Bimetallism,¹ asking, from the standpoint of a quantity theorist, why prices only increased 200% while money increased 470%, admits that the chief reason was the increase in trade, due in large part to the very increase in money itself. Sombart, in his Der Moderne Kapitalismus,² finds in this influx of money a tremendous source of capitalistic accumulations, (a) for the Conquistadores, (b) for the handicraftsmen whose prices rose faster than their costs, (c) for tenants whose rents were fixed in money, (d) for landowners, whose rents were fixed in kind [a point not obviously true], and (e) for bankers, as the Fugger. An increase of capital, savings that would otherwise not have been made, must have profoundly modified the whole industrial system, and greatly increased both industry and commerce. If it be objected that effects of this sort are not usual, that they came in a world which had been starved for money, and which, by means of the enormous increase in money was able to pass from a “natural” to a money economy, I reply that the difference between such a case and the usual effects of an increase of money are in degree rather than in kind. The world of Columbus’ day was in part on a money economy, and the world to-day, despite Professor Fisher’s emphatic denial,³ still employs a great deal of barter, or equivalents of barter. I shall revert to this point later. But even this consideration would not rob Sombart’s points of their significance for modern conditions. Further, we have an even more striking case, on Walker’s own showing, in the effects of the Californian and Australian⁴ gold discoveries in the 19th Century on trade, industry, and speculation.¹

Nor is the tremendous agitation over bimetallism, involving a literature so great that no man could dream of reading it all, involving great political movements, Presidential campaigns, great Congressional debates, repeated legislation, international conferences, etc., for twenty years, to be explained on any other ground than that the world felt practical, important, and unpleasant effects on industry and trade from the inadequacy of the money supply.

The view of Hartley Withers² is interesting here. He says: “any such great addition to currency and credit would have a great effect in stimulating production, and so would lead to a great addition to the number of real goods which humanity desires and consumes when it can get them. . . . Trade would be more active.” On p. 23 he speaks of the enormous expansion of trade made possible by paper representatives of gold. On p. 83 he speaks of the attitude of the money-market toward gold, which the orthodox economist is apt to think of as a survival of Mercantilism. Withers thinks that the money market is right in a large degree.

As illustrating Withers’ statement about the views of “practical men” on this point, the following extract from a recent address by Theodore Price, quoted with approval in a “market letter,” written by Byron W. Holt,¹ is interesting: “The fact seems to be that the exigencies of war in Europe are leading to an extension of credit such as would not have been possible in peace, because the hesitant conservatism of bankers would have then prevented it, and we are finding that instead of working harm it is doing good, because huge masses of fixed capital are thereby made productive, and are circulating with the increased velocity that always quickens enterprise and accelerates the wheels of industry. . . . All the precedents of history indicate that accelerated activity will come with peace and continue until the exuberance of success has led men to build faster than the world has grown and to demand credit upon the basis of future rather than of present values.”

What is the essential causation in the matter? Well, viewed merely as a matter of mechanical equilibration, the quantity theory view is not strictly true, by any means. For a given country—and Fisher’s quantity theory is always a theory for a given country, and, indeed, for any separate market, even a single city²—an increase of banking credit means an increase in non-monetary capital, because, to a greater or less extent it dispenses with the use of gold, which goes abroad, bringing back wealth in other forms in exchange. Adam Smith saw this clearly, and phrased it strikingly, likening gold and silver coins to the wagon-roads of Scotland, which are necessary for transportation, but which none the less prevent the use of the roadways for raising grain; whereas bank credit is like a wagon-road through the air, which restores the roadbeds to cultivation. Increased non-monetary capital, other things equal, should mean increased trade.

But, more fundamentally, an increase in gold itself within the country, if not bought by the export of an equivalent amount of other goods, is an increase of capital. Not all capital is money, but standard coin is capital. Money is a tool of exchange, and exchange is part of the productive process. More money means more exchanging. That is what money is for. Part of the mechanism is in the money rates, which go down as money becomes more abundant, making it profitable to effect exchanges which would not have been profitable had the money rates been higher. Granted that the money-rates and the general rate of interest tend, in the long run, to keep—I will not say at the same figure¹—a certain fairly definite relation to one another, it still does not follow that the new “normal” equilibrium will give us an interest rate which is the same as the general rate of interest was before the influx of gold. On the strictest static theory, this is not to be expected. Because the total amount of capital in the country is increased, and this means a lowered interest rate all around, in the marginal employment of capital. The margin of the use of capital will be lowered everywhere, including the margin for the use of money. This means permanently lowered money rates in the country, even though the permanent level be higher than the initial money rates immediately following the access of new gold. I have put the argument in terms that suggest the productivity theory of interest, because it is more simply stated that way. I do not accept the productivity theory, as a fundamental explanation of interest, but for many purposes, the results to be obtained by it coincide with the psychological time theories,—which also, in their present form, seem to me imperfectly developed. I need not try to construct a theory of interest here, however, as the familiar theories lead to no trouble at this point. It is enough to point out that the increased amount of capital, meaning better provision for present wants—wants concerned with gold in the arts and with money for productive exchanges, as well as goods generally since part of the new gold will be exported for other things—will lessen the pressure of present as compared with future wants, and so lessen the rate of interest on the time-preference theory. The final outcome will be an extension of the marginal use of money, and a greater volume of exchanges. Of course, the increase in the supply of any kind of capital good, apart from a prior increase in the demand for its services, will, on the mechanical view of economic causation, necessarily lead to some fall in its capital value. Gold money will be no exception to this rule. As to how much the increase in its quantity will lead its capital value to fall, however, we are unable to say. For the quantity theory, the fall will be in proportion to the increase. For the theory just outlined, the fall will depend on the elasticity of demand for gold in the arts, and on the elasticity of “demand” for money, meaning by demand for money simply the demand for the short-time use of money as a tool of exchange, a demand which governs directly, not the capital value of money, but rather the “money-rates.” The relation between the money rates and the capital value of money will best be discussed at another point.¹ We have no reason at all to suppose that either of these demands² exhibits the tendency to obey the law of proportional variation which the quantity theory requires of money.

It is further important to note that as a country gets more abundant capital, there seems to be a tendency to extend the use of money rather more than the use of many other capital goods. Where the interest rate is 10 and 12%, as in Arizona and New Mexico, money, even when brought in, tends to leave in large degree to bring in other forms of capital which the situation calls for more imperatively. The early American colonies, needing money pressingly, and making shift with a great variety of substitutes for good metallic money, thoroughly acquainted with the advantages of a money-economy from their European experience, and having “habits” as to the carrying and using of money which they had brought with them from Europe, still found it impossible to keep a great deal of metallic money, in view of the still greater importance of other forms of capital. It is in the most highly developed commercial communities, commercial centres, and par excellence, in the speculative centres, that the demand for the money-service is most elastic.³ A country where the rate of interest is low, loses other forms of capital, and gains money, in the process of reëquilibration, as compared with a new and undeveloped section, although the new section also extends the margin of the money service, in effecting a greater number of exchanges, when money is increased.

And this leads to a vital distinction, which quantity theorists almost always lose: the distinction between the volume of production, and the volume of trade. Even in the mechanical system of causation which they describe, it is true only of production and transportation that technical and physical¹ factors are of primary significance, and that money is of minor significance. For trade and commerce, money is always highly important. To the extent that a region is primarily given over to the primary productive activities, mining, and agriculture, such trading as is necessary can be done by means of a small amount of money, supplemented by barter and long-time book-credit. A region or a city whose chief business is commerce, however, needs a large part of its capital in the form of money, and of banking capital, which is largely invested in money for banking reserves. Trade, as distinguished from industry (and it is after all trade, that is under discussion), is helped or hindered as its tools are more or less abundant. These considerations would suggest that the elasticity of the demand for the use of money is greater than the elasticity of demand for the use of capital in almost any other form. Production is, indeed, limited by labor supply and natural resources, in considerable degree. Trade,² however, even from the standpoint of mechanical causation, is limited chiefly by the relation between the profits to be made in commercial transactions, and the “price” that must be paid for the money and credit that are required to put them through. There are enormous numbers of transfers that could be made to advantage if there were no cost at all involved. They are not made, because exchanging requires pecuniary capital. Let the pecuniary capital increase, however, and sub-marginal exchanges become worth while, the general margin is lowered. Commerce is the most highly flexible and elastic portion of the whole productive process. The elasticity of demand for commercial capital is, thus, greater than the elasticity of demand for any other form of capital.

How widely the volume of trade differs from the volume of production, and how great is the element of speculative transactions in trade, will best appear, I think, from an analysis of the figures which Fisher gives¹ for the volume of trade in the United States. His figure for the volume of trade in the year 1909 is $387,000,000,000.00, three hundred and eighty-seven billions of dollars! This figure is reached by equating the figures he has reached for MV plus M′V′ to PT, and assuming P to be one dollar, by making the “unit” of T, arbitrarily, a dollar’s worth of each sort of commodity, at the prices of 1909. I have already commented on the legitimacy of this method of summarizing T,² and need not say more here, beyond calling attention to the fact that “volume of trade,” as commonly used, does in fact mean, not T alone, but PT. Fisher for years other than 1909, however, makes use of a different method of getting at T: he takes certain indicia of relative amounts of trade, compares them with the same indicia for 1909, and estimates the trade for other years as being such a percentage of the trade for 1909 as their indicia are of the indicia of 1909. The indicia chosen are: (1) quantities of certain commodities, cotton, fruit, cattle, etc., received at principal cities of the United States, taken as typical of the variations of the internal commerce of the United States; (2) quantities of 23 articles of import and 25 articles of export, for each year, taken as typical of variations in the foreign trade of the United States; (3) sales of stocks. These three indicia, weighted in a manner to be described in a moment, are then averaged. There is a second element in the index, made up by taking the figures for railroad tonnage, and the figures for receipts on first class mail, which are averaged. The first average and the second average are then combined into a third average, which is the final index. The relation between this index for every year other than 1909 and the same index for the year 1909 determines the amount of T for each year—the two indicia, together with the figure, $387,000,000,000.00, giving the required amount by the “rule of three.” I shall not go into details with the method of constructing these averages, but I wish to make clear the comparative weight given to each element in the final index: The first three elements count twice as heavily as the last two, and so constitute the biggest factor. In the first average, based on the first three elements, the item taken as typical of internal trade is weighted by 20, the item taken as typical of foreign trade is weighted by 3, and sale of stocks by 1. It appears from Fisher’s figures (p. 479), that the one really big variable among all the indicia is the sale of stocks, but the weight given it is so small that it makes virtually no difference in the final result. Thus, as between 1898 and 1899, stock sales increased over 50%, but total trade, as shown by Fisher, increased only 5%. In the following year, stock sales decreased over 21%, but total trade, on Fisher’s figures, increased. The following year, 1901, stock sales virtually doubled, but Fisher’s final figure shows only an increase around 13%. Two years later, in 1903, stock sales fell off about 40%, from the figures for 1901, but again, as compared with 1901, total trade on Fisher’s figures shows an appreciable gain. The influence of stock sales on Fisher’s index is, virtually, negligible. The dominating factor is the receipts of selected staples, cattle, cotton, rice, pig iron, etc., in the principal cities of the United States. There is not a single year in which his final figure for T does not move in harmony with this factor (p. 479). He gets, thus, for the volume of trade through the fourteen years under consideration, a surprising steadiness, and a pretty uniform progressive development.

In defence¹ of his method of weighting, Fisher says, simply: “These weights are, of course, merely matters of opinion, but, as is well known, wide differences in systems of weighting make only slight differences in the final averages.” (Italics mine.)²

Are these figures valid? Well, first one is struck with the absolute magnitude assigned to T. The figures seem vastly greater than would have been anticipated. The method of calculating it, for 1909, I shall discuss in detail in the chapter on “Statistical Demonstrations of the Quantity Theory.” For the present, it is enough to note that the absolute magnitude is derived from figures collected by Dean David Kinley for the National Monetary Commission,¹ of deposits, exclusive of deposits made by one bank in another, made in about 12,000 banks (out of 25,000) on March 16, 1909. These deposits were classified as (1) money (with subdivisions) and (2) checks and other credit instruments. A cross-classification divided them into (1) retail deposits; (2) wholesale deposits; (3) all other deposits. Kinley’s object was to determine the extent to which checks are used, as compared with money, in payments, particularly in wholesale and retail business. Fisher’s total, briefly, was obtained as follows: Kinley’s figures, for the one day, were increased to make an allowance for the non-reporting banks; they were further increased on the assumption that March 16 was below the average for the year; the figure finally obtained for the day was then multiplied by 303, assumed as the number of banking days in the year, and the product, 399 billions, was taken as representing the total circulation of money and checks in trade. For some reason not made clear, this total was subsequently reduced to 387 billions. Counting the average price, P, as $1, T was considered to be 387 billions.²

In the statistical chapter to follow, it will be shown that this estimate is a very decided exaggeration. Deposits made in banks greatly overcount trade. Very many payments represent duplications, loans and repayments, taxes, etc., and are in no sense trade. This is true of all classes of deposits, wholesale and retail, as well as “all other.” But for the present, I am concerned with the question, not of the absolute magnitude of the volume of trade, but rather, the questions of its character, of the elements that enter into it, and, above all, of the extent to which it is physically determined by technical conditions of production, and the extent to which it is flexible, a matter of speculation, etc.

We may approach this question from the angle of several bodies of statistical information. First, the question may be raised: what is there in the country which could be bought and sold enough in the course of a year to give us anything like so great a total? The subtractions which we shall find it necessary to make will still leave us an enormous total.

The United States Census Bureau¹ in 1904 reached the conclusion that the total wealth of the country was only $107,000,000,000. Of this, over $62,000,000,000 was in real estate; $11,000,000,000 in railroads; street railways, over $2,000,000,000; telephone, telegraph, water and light, and similar enterprises total nearly $3,000,000,000 more. None of these things enter into ordinary wholesale and retail trade. The items that one would ordinarily think of are agricultural products, $1,900,000,000; manufactured products, $7,400,000,000; mining products, $400,000,000. Can these things be exchanged often enough in the course of a year to account for $387,000,000,000!

These figures are for 1904,² whereas Fisher’s figures are for 1909. If the Census Bureau had taken an inventory in 1909, the figures would doubtless be larger. The inventory for 1912 made by the Census Bureau does show a very considerable increase, the largest item being due to a rise in real estate values. The figures for agricultural, manufacturing, and mining products are, also, figures for a given time rather than for total production through the year. But, making all the allowance one pleases, it is quite incredible that one should reach a figure of $387,000,000,000 by taking only the exchanges necessary to bring raw materials through the various stages of production to the consumer. The greater part of the $387,000,000,000 is to be explained in another way!

A detailed analysis of Kinley’s figures, on which the estimate of total trade is based, leads clearly to the same conclusion. Kinley’s figures for the banks that reported on March 16, 1909, are as follows:

Retail deposits	60 millions
Wholesale deposits	124 millions
“All other” deposits	502 millions

The “all other deposits” are vastly greater than retail and wholesale deposits combined! Notice, too, with reference to the question as to how often goods need to be turned over in getting to the consumer: wholesale trade uses only about twice as much money and checks as does retail trade. Goods are not, if these figures are in any way typical of actual trade, turned over many times in the process of reaching the consumer. The “necessary,” or “physically determined” number of exchanges, in the routine of trade, is small, per item.

Retail deposits of 60 millions make up less than one-eleventh of the total. Retail and wholesale deposits together make up about three-elevenths. What is the other eight-elevenths, represented by the “all other deposits”? It will help if we see where these “all other” deposits are located. If we find them scattered evenly throughout the country, in rural regions as well as in cities, we might be at a loss. If, however, we find them bunched in the big speculative centres, we may conclude that speculation accounts for a large part of them. We do in fact find this.

The following figures show the different classes of deposits (1) in the South Atlantic States; (2) in reserve cities; (3) in New York City alone:

South Atlantic Stales:		Per Cent.
Retail deposits	$ 3,300,000	19.0
Wholesale deposits	4,900,000	29.0
“All other” deposits	8,900,000	52.0
Reserve Cities (including New York City):
Retail deposits	$ 24,000,000	5.6
Wholesale deposits	78,000,000	18.2
“All other” deposits	326,000,000	76.1
New York City:
Retail deposits	9,000,000	3.7
Wholesale deposits	34,000,000	14.0
“All other” deposits	198,000,000	82.2

It is difficult, with Kinley’s figures, to get figures which exclude returns from cities of substantial size, except for a State like Nevada, where the mining and divorce industries complicate the figures. As near an approach as can be made, perhaps, is to take the State of Louisiana, excluding New Orleans from the totals. Even here, however, we include five cities of over ten thousand, among them Shrevesport, with 28,000 people. The following figures are for the State and national banks in Louisiana, exclusive of New Orleans:

Retail deposits.	$ 179,915	24.1
Wholesale deposits	246,647	33.1
“All other” deposits	318,915	42.8

We cannot tell, in these figures for Louisiana, how many banks are represented, or what the average figures per bank are. For the whole State of Arkansas, however, including five cities of over 10,000, with two over 20,000, and one of 45,000, we can get an average for ninety reporting banks. Even here we do not know where these banks are located within the State, though it is probable that they are in the larger places, and so exceed the average deposits for the banks in the State as a whole, to say nothing of the average for the smaller places. The ninety banks are almost wholly State and national banks.

Arkansas:		Per Cent.
Retail deposits.	$ 232,017	25 +
Wholesale deposits	231,614	25 +
“All other” deposits	456,544	49 +

The average for all deposits, per bank, in Arkansas is $10,224; the average for all the 11,492 banks reporting for the whole country is, approximately, $60,000; the average for the 659 banks reporting from New York State is $502,136; the average for the banks in New York City alone is doubtless much higher, but cannot be stated, as Kinley’s figures do not tell how many banks reported by cities.¹

The “all other deposits” in Arkansas are 27.8% cash, and 72.2% checks; the “all other” deposits in the country as a whole are only 4.1% cash, with 95.9% checks; the “all other deposits” of New York City are only 1% cash, with 98.9% checks.

Several facts are very clear from these comparisons: (1) the proportion of “all other deposits” increases very rapidly as we get closer to the great centres of speculation, and is lowest in rural regions; (2) the great bulk of all the deposits is in the cities. The average for Arkansas banks, for example, is only one-sixth the average of the whole country, and is only one-fiftieth the average for the banks of New York State. It is a much smaller fraction of the average for New York City, but we cannot give an exact figure. The totals reported from the rural regions are trifling, as compared with the totals reported from the big cities. This, as will be made clear in the chapter on “Statistical Demonstrations of the Quantity Theory,” is not because the country reports were less complete that the city reports. New York was probably less complete than the country as a whole. It is simply because the activity of country accounts is small, the amount of trading in the country districts small, and (as shown) the average for country banks is small. (3) The character of the “all other” deposits in Arkansas differs substantially from that of the “all other” deposits in New York City, as indicated by the fact that the proportion of cash is high in Arkansas—substantially higher, in fact, for the “all other” deposits in Arkansas than for all deposits, or even for retail deposits, in the country as a whole. The percentage of checks in total retail deposits in the United States, in Kinley’s figures, was 73.2; the percentage of checks in the “all other” deposits in Arkansas was 72.2. We may count these Arkansas “all other” deposits as, in considerable degree, deposits made by farmers. What were the “all other deposits” made in New York City?

Dean Kinley’s list of the miscellaneous elements that enter into the “all other deposits,” given on p. 151, contains only two that might be expected to bulk large in New York without appearing in Arkansas. These are: brokers, and stock and bond financial corporations. Of course, theatres, hotels, publishing houses, railroads, public funds, “those who have no specific business,” and rich churches, will all be absolutely much larger in New York City than in Arkansas. But these things may be found in many places, scattered throughout the cities of the country, without making anything like such “all other” deposits as New York shows. It is not New York’s foreign commerce that does it, because that is represented in New York’s “wholesale deposits,” which make up only 14% of New York City’s total deposits for the day. It cannot be the supposed “clearing house” function of New York City,¹ whereby banks in different parts of the country pay their balances due one another in New York exchange, because such transactions would appear in New York chiefly in the figures for deposits made by one bank in another, and these figures are excluded from Kinley’s totals. It cannot be the deposits of the “idle rich” for current expenses that swell New York’s “all other deposits” so greatly—these could not equal the total retail deposits of the city, which are only 3.7% of the total in New York. Moreover, similar deposits are made in many other cities, without, in proportion to population, making any such totals. Figures, moreover, for the aggregate yearly income of the United States, and for the distribution of that income between rich and poor, make it clear that any such items must be bagatelles in comparison with these enormous figures. The only explanation that will really explain is the speculative and investment and financial transactions that centre in New York, and, in less degree, in the other great financial cities of the country.

This is Dean Kinley’s opinion. In the “all other” deposits he makes a 50% allowance for speculative transactions. “A large proportion of deposits in this ‘all others’ class undoubtedly represents speculative transactions, all of which, or practically all of which, are settled with credit paper.”¹ It is also the opinion of General Francis A. Walker, expressed concerning similar figures from earlier inquiries.²

Various kinds of evidence converge toward this conclusion. Thus, the evidence of clearings, total items presented by banks to the clearing houses of the country. New York clearings are usually nearly twice as great as total clearings for the rest of the country. New York clearings fluctuate in general harmony with transactions on the New York Stock Exchange. This has been commented on many times. The extent to which it holds has recently been carefully measured by Mr. N. J. Silberling, whose results appear in the Annalist for August 14, 1916, under the title, “The Mystery of Clearings.” Mr. Silberling applies the “coefficient of correlation” to the problem, getting in one significant figure a measure of the extent to which two variables, as share sales on the New York Stock Exchange and New York clearings, vary together. This coefficient has been used enough by economists not to require detailed explanation here. It is a figure always between + 1 and—1. + 1 indicates that the two variables in question are perfectly correlated, whereas o indicates no correlation whatever.—1 indicates an inverse correlation, such that two variables vary exactly and inversely with reference to one another.³

Mr Silberling’s studies show the following correlations: New York share sales (numbers of shares, not values) to New York clearings, using weekly figures, for the years 1909–10, r = .628. This is a high correlation. Limiting the observations to the middle weeks of the month for the same period, he gets r = .731(46). The reason for taking only middle weeks in the month is that thereby the disturbing factor of monthly settlements is avoided. The monthly settlements may be for stock transactions, or may be for other things, but as they are not dependent on the stock transactions of the week in which they occur, their effect is to lessen the evident degree of connection between stock sales and clearings. Thus the middle weeks show a closer correlation between the two variables than do all the weeks taken as they come. If figures for the month were taken, this complication would be smoothed out, and a fairer result might be expected to appear. The middle weeks, eliminating monthly settlements, probably eliminate more other things than they do share sales (which are in large degree paid for in 24 hours¹), and so exaggerate somewhat the relation between shares and clearings. Monthly figures avoid both complications, though they lose something of the concrete causation. An intermediate figure might be expected for the monthly correlation, and this we find: r = 718(23).

A striking single fact in connection with these figures, giving them point as less extreme variations could not do, is found in the behavior of clearings when the Stock Exchange was closed, during the crisis of 1914. At that time, New York clearings, which had been about twice as great as country clearings, fell suddenly below country clearings. When the Stock Exchange was opened, the old proportions suddenly reappeared.

That speculation spreads far beyond New York, New York being the centre for dealings in securities, etc., which involve the whole country, is, of course, well known. The extent of this Mr. Silberling seeks to measure by correlating clearings outside New York with New York share sales. His weekly correlation for these two variables for 1909–10 gives r = .368(103), and the correlation for the mid-weeks gives a higher figure, r = .424(46). The monthly correlation shows r = .257(23), a lower figure, “which is perhaps due in part to the fact that the bulk of the outside monthly clearings show relatively moderate fluctuations, because of their diverse composition, and are less sensitive than the periods of shorter length.”

Seeking an index of the variations of that trade which is, in Professor Fisher’s phrase, governed by “physical capacities and technique”—a law which Professor Fisher,¹ as we have seen, would apply to the great total of 387 billions which he has constructed—Mr. Silberling chooses the gross earnings of the principal railways as the best available test. Railways deal with all manner of other enterprises. He correlates this with clearings outside New York. “The question might arise at once whether changes in traffic are strictly concomitant with changes in payments involved by it, and therefore with the clearings resulting. The preliminary hypothesis that a ‘lag’ ensued between traffic and the bulk of the payments was first tested by correlating the railway figures with clearings of one month² and two months later, but no correlation was obtained. The direct month-to-month correlation yielded, however, a result r = 524(23).” This suggests that outside clearings are, in substantial degree, an index of physical trade, but Mr. Silberling calls attention to certain chance agreements between railway traffic and speculation in cotton and produce and grain, speculation in the crops which are in current movement, and regularly recurring concomitances between traffic and speculation in March, when the railway traffic revives after the February lull, and when there is a large mass of dealing in Spring deliveries in Chicago. In view of the facts later to be developed, with reference to the small actual value of the necessary physical exchanges (partially covered already) as compared with clearings, this query is well put. We may easily have here a “spurious” correlation. Taking it at its face value, however, and taking the correlation as indicating the influence of physical trade on bank transactions, we get the following results, when total clearings for the country are compared with (a) New York share sales, and (b) with railway gross earnings: (a) r = .607(23); (b) r = .356(23). “Physically determined trade” is at best a minor factor in that total “trade” represented by bank transactions!

Mr. Silberling has buttressed his results with a consideration of various alternative possibilities which might give them a different interpretation. I need not, for present purposes, go further into his figures.¹ Taken in conjunction with the other data presented, and to be presented, together with the theoretical discussion of the nature of trade, and its relations to money and credit, which the present volume contains, they give the present writer abundant confidence in the thesis that the great bulk of trade in the United States is SPECULATION, rather than that sort of trade which is determined “by physical capacities and technique.”

The figures given above, of the inventory of wealth at a given moment of time, by the Bureau of the Census, show only trifling magnitudes, as compared with the estimated 387 billions of deposits made in 1909, of items which could enter into ordinary trade, as distinguished from speculation and dynamic readjustments. An effort to calculate ordinary trade on the basis of figures running through the year may throw further light on the problem. Railway, gross receipts for the year ending June 30, 1909, were less than two and a half billions. This is six-tenths of 1% of the total. Receipts of the Western Union Telegraph Company were $30,451,073—less than one-hundredth of 1%. The Post Office in the fiscal year ending in 1909 took in $203,562,383. This is something over one twentieth of 1%. These are gigantic sums. But they are insignificant indeed in this computation. Millions of smaller items simply do not count at all—ten million items of $387 each would give only 1%. The total net income of the United States, as estimated by W. I. King for 1910, including all forms of income, dividends, interest, wages, rents, profits, salaries, etc., is $30,500,000,000 ¹—around 7% of the 387 billions.

Let us sum up the major items of ordinary trade. From Kinley’s figures, we may get some idea of the proportions of wholesale and retail trade to the total for 1909, assuming that the deposit figures indicate that total. Retail deposits make up less than one-eleventh of the total, and wholesale deposits about two-elevenths. The figures were: retail, 60 millions, wholesale, 124 millions, and “all other,” 502 millions. But the “all other” deposits were lower than normal. New York City was, in the first place, probably less complete than the rest of the country, in the figures returned, and, in the second place, New York City, as shown by the clearings of March 17 (the next day, when checks deposited in New York would get into the clearings) was 28% below normal. The rest of the country was within 3% of normal.² Not to refine matters too much, we shall, on the assumption that the variable element in New York deposits is connected with the Stock Exchange (as shown by Mr. Silberling’s correlations and other considerations), and on the assumption that deposits connected with the stock market appear in the “all other” deposits, add a little over 20% of New York’s total of 198 millions, or 40 millions, to the “all other” deposits for the country, leaving the wholesale and retail deposits unchanged. What error there is in this is favorable to the wholesale and retail deposits. Our proportions, then, are: retail, 60, wholesale, 124, “all other,” 542, total, 726. If the retail deposits correctly represented retail trade, we could then say that retail trade was a little less than one-twelfth of the whole, and wholesale trade about one-sixth. But there are many speculative transactions engaged in by wholesalers, and a good many by retailers. The writer knows a small delicatessen dealer on Amsterdam Avenue, in New York, who frequently speculates in eggs and canned goods. A colleague in the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration is authority for the statement that speculation in canned goods and some other things is quite common among retailers, particularly “hedging” by the use of “futures,” in canned goods. Speculation among wholesalers is very extensive. The same is true of manufacturers. The same authority cited some cotton manufacturers whose profits from cotton speculation are greater than their profits from manufacturing. We shall see reason to suppose that a very substantial part of manufacturers’ deposits were included in the wholesale deposits. That the figures for retailers’ deposits exaggerate the retail trade may appear from several considerations: (1) The proportion of checks to cash reported is too high: 73.2%. Dean Kinley allows 5% of the checks deposited to be “accommodation checks,”¹ cashed for customers, rather than taken in in trade. (2) If retail deposits are taken as exactly representative of retail trade, we should get a retail trade for the year of over 32 billions (1–12 of 387 billions), which would exceed the total income of the country as calculated by King for 1910. Dean Kinley reached the conclusion that the retail deposits reported in 1896 also exceeded the probable retail expenditures.¹ Of course, not all of retail trade is in consumption goods. Hardware stores, lumber stores, and some other retail establishments sell, not only to householders for domestic use, but also things which enter into further production, and so do not come out of annual income. If we include in retail trade various items which were not included there in Kinley’s figures, such as hotels, theatres, newspaper receipts from subscription and street sales, physicians’ fees, etc.—all those items which enter into the domestic budget, including domestic service, we should still not be justified in reaching a total as great as the total income of society, since there would then be no allowance for savings, which we should not count in trade, or for life insurance, which we shall count separately. The items sold at retail which enter into further production cannot make a great total, since large producers buy such things at wholesale. Total retail trade, therefore, and, in addition all the other items in the domestic budget, must be held below the figure for total national income. Suppose, to be very liberal, we allow 29 billions² for all these items, under the general head of “retail trade.”

For wholesale trade, if we take the figures at face value, the estimate would be 65³/4 billions (¹²⁴/726 of 387 billions, or 17% of 387 billions). But we have seen that there is a great deal of speculation among wholesalers. Not all of their deposits, by any means, represent receipts from ordinary business. Moreover, there is much overcounting here, several checks being used for one transaction, especially where wholesalers have branch houses, and checks connected with loans and repayments, and transfers of funds from one bank to another. How much we should subtract for this there is no way to tell. In the case of retail figures, we have the additional check of the figures for total net income, but there is no such check here. We shall, therefore, make no subtraction, but shall content ourselves with pointing out that we are allowing many billions¹ to “ordinary trade” to which it is not entitled, which will much more than offset errors in the opposite direction which the reader may find in our computations.

Do manufacturers’ receipts from first sales belong in the wholesale deposits, or must they be counted as a separate item? Dean Kinley does not say. In his list of items, as reported by banks, that go in the “all other” deposits,² he does not mention manufacturers, and the item is far too important not to have been mentioned by so careful a writer had he supposed that it belonged there. If manufacturers’ first receipts belong, not in the wholesale deposits, but in the “all other” deposits, then we should expect manufacturing cities to show a high percentage of “all other” deposits as compared with wholesale deposits. The city of Pittsburg should be a good test case. The figures there, for State and national banks and trust companies, are:

		Per Cent.
Retail deposits.	$ 1,061,420	9.6
Wholesale deposits	3,368,004	29.7
“All other” deposits	6,672,378	60.6

For Pittsburg, the percentage of “all other” deposits is lower decidedly than the percentage for the country as a whole (about 75%), much lower than for cities where there is active speculation, as Chicago and St. Louis, to say nothing of New York, and is closer to the percentage of the South Atlantic States, 52%, than to the average for the country. The wholesale deposits of Pittsburg, however, rise to 29.7%, as against an average for the country of 17%. There is nothing in these figures to suggest that manufacturers’ first receipts are exclusively in the “all other” deposits. I should think it safe to hold that a substantial part of them were included in wholesale deposits, and so already accounted for in our estimate. The total value of products manufactured in 1909 was $20,672,051,870. I shall allow $5,672,051,870 of this to have been already accounted for in our estimate of wholesale trade, and count 15 billions of it as a separate item. If there is an error here, it is very much more than offset by our failure to subtract anything from the wholesale figures for speculation. I think it probable that much more of the figures for manufactures should be assigned to the wholesale figures than I have assigned.

To these figures, we may add a number of other items, absolutely great, but insignificant, in comparison with the 387 billions not only, but also with the figures for retail and wholesale trade already reached. These are: total farm value of farm products (not nearly all of which is sold off the farm) $8,760,000,000; total mineral products, $1,886,772,843; total mill value of lumber, $684,479,859; total life insurance premiums (much of which is savings, and in no proper sense trade), $748,027,892; total fire, marine, casualty and miscellaneous insurance, $362,555,850; total wages and salaries, $14,303,000,000; total land rent, $2,673,000,000;¹ and the items for railway gross receipts, post office, telegraph, already mentioned. The total of these items, together with retail and wholesale trade and manufactures, is $141,860,618,000. This is only 36.6% of the total of 387 billions. It leaves over 245 billions unexplained. What can the 245 billions represent? There is really no way in which ordinary trade can make up more than a very few more billions, so far as I can see. There remain no items as big as 1% of the total, and, as we have seen, small items, of hundreds of dollars each, are like “infinitesimals of the second order”—they simply do not count at all when such staggering figures are involved.¹

There remains, then, a total of 245 billions of check and money payments which are for something other than the ordinary trade of the country. What do these payments represent? Much of this total represents overcounting and duplications of various kinds, which we shall consider in a later chapter. Much of it also represents speculation and dealings other than speculative in securities. When we seek to find actual figures of transactions in any field, retail, wholesale, or speculative markets, or anything else, it is exceedingly difficult to find anything that approaches the amounts indicated by the banking transactions connected. I do not think that a record of all sales would show retail sales or wholesale sales anything like so great as the figures as we have allowed for them on the basis of the retail and wholesale deposits. When we look at the recorded figures of transactions on the speculative exchanges (or at estimates which competent observers make when records are not available), the figures, though very large, do not begin to equal the banking figures with which we have to deal. The New York Stock Exchange in 1909 showed sales, recorded on the ticker, of nearly 215 million shares of stock, with an approximate value of over 19 billions¹ of dollars. This was not an extraordinary year. In 1901 nearly 266 million shares were sold, in 1905, over 263 millions, in 1906, over 284 millions. A number of other years have approached the figures for 1909. If stock sales be a good index of general speculation, 1909 is a very satisfactory year from which to have got figures, as showing neither extreme speculation, nor extreme dullness—which latter was the case in 1896 when Kinley’s other big investigation was made. The figures for shares sold, however, do not exhaust the business done at the New York Stock Exchange. “Odd lots,” i. e., sales of less than 100 shares, are not recorded on the ticker. Mr. Byron W. Holt estimates that from 25 to 30% would be added if they were counted. DeCoppet and Doremus, of New York, who handle at least as much of the “odd lot” business as any other New York house, have given me the following information about the “odd lot” business: (1) the volume of odd lot sales is, roughly, from 20 to 25% of the volume of hundred share sales; (2) the odd lot business fluctuates in conformity to the hundred share market; (3) the odd lot speculator is just as likely to be a “bear” as is the hundred share speculator, and, in general, odd lot business is like the hundred share business. If we take the figure on which these two estimates agree, 25%, we may add 53³/4 million shares to our 215, getting 268³/4 million shares for 1909, with a value of about 24 billions. Bond sales recorded would add about 1 billion more. There are, further, some unrecorded sales, indeterminate in amount, but sometimes very substantial, when brokers have a number of “stop loss” orders. They match these before the market opens, and, if the prices are reached in the actual trading, these sales become effective automatically, without getting on the ticker. How extensive this is cannot be stated. It may sometimes add very substantially.¹ Thus, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange we have dealings in excess of 25 billions for 1909. This is nearly as large as the figure we have assigned, on the basis of the bank figures, to total retail trade of the country, and it may well exceed the retail trade in fact. Recorded sales on other stock exchanges do not, in the aggregate for the country, bulk very large. For 1910, when New York shares reached 164 millions, the total for Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore was something over 21 million shares.¹ The New York Curb has had “million share” days, but the average value of shares is low. But the dealings on the floors on the exchanges and “curbs” are far from all of the dealings in securities! Only securities which have been admitted by the authorities are dealt in on the exchanges. The volume of unlisted securities is enormous. Moreover, not all, by any means, of the sales of listed securities take place on the floors of the exchanges. The bond expert of a large banking house in Boston informs me that the “over-the-counter” business in Boston, both for stocks and for bonds, much exceeds the business in the Boston Stock Exchange, and others among Boston brokers have expressed the same opinion. The statement has been repeatedly made in the financial press that of the bonds listed on the New York Stock Exchange, ten are sold over the counter for one sold on the floor. Evidence on this point is not to be had in definite figures, of course, but I have found no one in Wall Street who regards it as extravagant. A single big bank in New York sold $550,000,000 in bonds in 1911—more than half the recorded bond sales on the Stock Exchange.¹ I should not know how to estimate the volume of outside dealings within many billions of “probable error.” If ten billions of listed bonds are sold over the counter in New York alone, we may well suppose that the volume of over-the-counter sales of listed and unlisted securities at least is not smaller than the recorded sales on the floors of the exchanges. But this is all guess work. There are no definite data.

For produce, cotton, and grain speculation we have, in general, estimates rather than records. For the Board of Trade, in Chicago, there is one quite striking piece of information. That is that the Federal War Tax of 1 cent per hundred dollars on grain and provision futures on the exchanges produced $2,000,000 in Chicago alone in 1915.² For the purposes of the tax, deliveries within thirty days were counted, not as futures, but as “spot” transactions. The tax was collected almost wholly on grain. If the above figure is correct, then it is clear that dealings in these futures of over thirty days aggregated 20 billions of dollars worth. This gives no estimate of spot transactions, which are, however, very great. All this trading involved less than 400,000,000 bushels of grain received at Chicago—a little over a billion bushels were received at all primary markets. The grain received at Chicago was, thus, (at 80c. per bushel), sold sixty-two times over in these futures, and an unknown number of times in spot transactions. There are further enormous spot transactions in provisions of various kinds at Chicago.

Chicago is the great centre, of course, for this kind of speculation in the United States. It may well be the world’s chief market, so far as futures are concerned, though evidence to establish such a thesis is not at hand. London and Liverpool are gigantic centres of commodity speculation. But we have numerous cities in the United States where such speculation is very great. St. Louis, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and other cities are active speculative centres. New York, while small in its volume of grain and produce speculation as compared with Chicago, is the world’s centre for cotton speculation, and the world’s centre for futures in coffee, though yielding precedence to Havre, Santos and Hamburg,¹ ordinarily, in the volume of spot coffee transactions, and though handling only a very small amount of spot cotton. The volume of cotton sold in an ordinary year in New York is 50,000,000 bales.² though only about 160,000 bales are ordinarily received there, in a year.³ In the five years preceding 1909, the sales on the New York Coffee Exchange averaged over 16 million bags of 250 pounds each.⁴ In 1915, 32 million dollars were deposited as margins in connection with this speculation in coffee, and in ordinary years this runs from 25 to 30 millions, according to the Treasurer of the Exchange. The relation between the margins put up and the total pecuniary volume of trading is not indicated, but in most exchanges the actual depositing of margins is a small fraction of the pecuniary magnitude of the turnovers. Both the Cotton and the Coffee Exchanges are international centres. The Coffee Exchange now handles large transactions in sugar, also.

Contacts between the organized exchanges and ordinary business are very numerous. Producers in every line who can do so protect themselves by “hedging” in the exchanges which deal in their raw materials. This is a commonplace, so far as millers are concerned. The writer has found millers in a town off the main lines of the railroads in Missouri who regularly sell short a bushel of wheat on the St. Louis Merchants’ Exchange for every bushel they buy to grind. The business man who does not sometime take a “flier” in the market for other than hedging purposes is rare! But, apart from the organized markets there is an immense volume of speculation. If a wholesaler buys only what he can sell to retailers, it is not speculation. But if he buys in excess of the anticipated demands of his retailers, expecting to sell the excess at an advance to other wholesalers, he is speculating. If a farmer buys cattle to feed, he is not speculating, but if he buys them thinking to sell them at an advance in a short time, and does so, the transactions are speculative. The line is not easy to draw, in practice. Intention is shifting and uncertain. There is chance in every industrial, commercial, and agricultural operation. But for the point at hand, the test is simple: do more exchanges take place than are necessary, under the existing division of labor, to advance the materials of industry through the stages of production, and get things finally to the consumer? If so, the excess of exchanges is speculative. Trading between men in the same stage of production is speculation. It represents trading to smooth out dynamic changes, to bring about readjustments which would have been unnecessary had conditions really been static, and had the initial plans of enterprisers been adequate. Trading in anticipation of further trading with men in the same stage of production is speculative. This sort of thing, in the wholesale business, especially, is exceedingly common. This has been noted by Professor Taussig, and made by him an important point in the theory of crises. Dean Kinley¹ called attention to it as a matter of importance in connection with his investigation in 1896. The coming of cold storage, and the development of the canning industry have, I am informed by a colleague in the Harvard Business School, enormously increased this speculation among both wholesalers and retailers, and it is very important in most wholesale lines. There is short-selling in materials for construction purposes, and in metals, apart from organized exchanges, and, where possible, contractors in the building trade often protect themselves by means of future contracts with speculators who are selling short.

Land speculation, in varying volume, is found in every part of the country. There is speculation in leases, in options on real estate, and in options on leases.² It may be noticed, too, that sales of “rights,” of puts and calls and straddles, and other contract rights, are regular factors in the organized exchanges. Wherever profits are to be made by leveling values as between different places or different times, speculation arises, and, with dynamic change, this means everywhere, in every business, and all the time! The shifting of labor and capital from industry to industry, leveling returns to capital and labor, involves an enormous amount of trading that would not occur in a “normal equilibrium.” Much of this the Stock Exchange does. That is what it is for. But much of it has to do with unincorporated industry, and a vast deal of speculative exchanging takes place to this end apart from the organized exchanges.

Speculation in bills and notes, by note-brokers and particularly by dealers in foreign exchange, occurs on a large scale, and accounts for a great deal of the banking figures. This has nothing to do with physically determined trade. From the standpoint of Professor Fisher’s “equation of exchange,” it must be barred, if the contention that “trade” is determined by “physical capacities and technique” is to be adhered to. Speculation in demand finance bills is barred in any case, since “money against checks,” and “checks against checks,” are excluded by his definition.¹ But as an explanation of no small part of our unexplained 245 billions of dollars, these items must be brought in. They are “double counting” from the standpoint of Professor Fisher’s equation. They are, however, speculation. An official in a great New York banking house, in charge of the foreign exchange department, writes that in times when exchange rates are fluctuating, enormous quantities of drafts on Europe will be bought and sold, during a period of a couple of weeks or months, whereas under other conditions such transactions might amount to little with the same volume of imports and exports. The part of this which is between banks, a very big item, would not count in the 245 billions, but to the extent that foreign exchange brokers outside the banks participate, their activity helps to explain our 245 billions.

If it be true that speculation, including all manner of readjustment to dynamic changes, makes up the overwhelming bulk of trade in the country, then Fisher’s indicia of variation in trade, weighted as they are, are totally misleading. The same is true of Kemmerer’s indicia of “growth of business.”² These are: population, tonnage entered and cleared, exports and imports of merchandise, postal revenues, gross earnings of railways, freights carried by railways, receipts of the Western Union Co., consumption of pig iron, bituminous coal retained for consumption, consumption of wheat, consumption of corn, consumption of cotton, consumption of wool, consumption of wines and liquors, market values of reported sales on the New York Stock Exchange. Only the last of these is in any sense an index of speculation. It is swallowed up by being put on a par with the other fourteen items. Its influence on the final index, made by averaging the others is, as inspection shows, virtually nil. Out of the twenty-six years his figures cover, the general index moves counter to the share sales 14 times! Utterly random figures would have come nearer to the facts in the case. It is particularly striking that Professor Kemmerer, whose total figures, as Professor Fisher’s, rest for their absolute magnitude on Kinley’s investigation,¹ should assign 89% of his estimated trade (183 billions in 1890) to wholesale commodities,² (with 3% to wages, and 8% to securities), when Kinley’s figures show that wholesale deposits are a minor fraction of the total!

The constancy in the figures of these two writers for trade from year to year, a general steady, upward growth, does indeed suggest that trade is determined “by physical capacities and technique,” and that it does stand as a great, independent, inflexible factor, independent of money and deposits, constituting a real causal coefficient with them in determining prices. If, however, speculation is as big a factor as our analysis would indicate, then trade is a highly flexible thing, varying enormously from year to year, moved by a multiplicity of causes, among them fluctuations in particular prices, and the ease and tightness in the money market—the quantity of money and deposits.

But quite apart from speculation, it is not true that trade is a mere matter of physical capacities and technique, a passive function of production. Rather, one would almost have to reverse the relation. Production waits on trade!

Production, as now carried on, is primarily conducted in the expectation of sale, and of profitable sale. Trade does not go of itself, automatically. Rather, it is a highly difficult matter, calling for the highest order of ability, and the labor of innumerable men. In general, I think it safe to say that in ordinary times, the manufacturer loses vastly more sleep over the question of how he shall market his output, than he does over the question of how he shall produce it. A clerk in the Westinghouse Air Brake Company, engaged in the accounting department, spoke recently to the writer of the “productive end” of the business. On inquiry, it developed that he meant the selling department! He stated that the manufacturing department also, in the language of the employees, in that corporation, would also be termed “productive,” but that the selling department was the productive department.

If one reflects a little as to the proportion of “costs” that go into selling, as compared with technical “production,” I think my point will be clearer. Advertising has developed so enormously that it needs little discussion. It has been stated that the “Sapolio” people once tried, after their reputation seemed thoroughly established, to stop advertising, with such disastrous results that very extraordinary efforts were required to reestablish the brand. Number 2 wheat is not advertised, in the great magazines, but innumerable brands of flour get newspaper and magazine advertising,—some of them in such a periodical as the Saturday Evening Post, and even those which are locally consumed are commonly advertised in the local press. Nor is it only finished products, of the sort that must be sold to the fickle public, that involve these heavy selling costs. The writer has in mind a corporation producing a high-grade type of glazed retort, in the production of which it has virtually a monopoly, since the clay with which it is made does not coexist with the skill to make it in any other place. The particular product is an indispensable part of many important technical processes. Substitutes made of other clays, and by other companies, are known by the trade to be unsatisfactory. The buyers are all highly trained business men. Here, if anywhere, selling costs should be slight. But the chief selling agent of the corporation has found it necessary, in order to keep the business going, to incur huge expenses for entertaining his customers, finds it necessary to incur great travelling expenses, to use only the most expensive hotels, and, incidentally, to drink a great deal more than his personal inclinations would call for, in keeping the business for his house. I waive discussion of the extraordinary fees which a trust promotor makes, in effecting a consolidation of big business units,—a process of exchange. I am speaking now of the ordinary costs involved in ordinary trade. The army of travelling salesmen, the body of stenographers, who write letters, with various “follow-ups,” in the effort to get more business, the growing complexities of such letter writing, in which all suspicion of “circularizing” must be allayed, one-cent stamps being absolutely taboo!—these things are the commonplaces of business. They are in the primers in the “commercial colleges” and “schools of commerce.” Only the orthodox economist, with his doctrine of the impossibility of general overproduction, is ignorant of them!

This feature of modern business has been much elaborated in a recent book which has not received the attention it merits—though its strength is rather in criticism than in constructive doctrine. I refer to Dibblee, The Laws of Supply and Demand.¹ Dibblee makes an interesting contrast between commercial and manufacturing cities, maintaining that the former necessarily outgrow the latter—a contention which London, New York, Chicago and other places strikingly illustrate. He presents a truly remarkable fact about London:² a recent report of the Commission on London Traffic states that there were in London 638 factories registered as coming under the Factory Acts, with an average horse-power of 54. The total power employed within the London area under the Factory Acts, chiefly used in newspaper printing, was 34,750 horse-power—just one-half of what is required for the steamship, Mauretania! This is the greatest city in the world. What do its millions do for a living?³ The town of Oldham,⁴ he asserts, with 100,000 inhabitants, has spindle capacity enough to supply more than the regular needs of the whole of Europe in the common counts of yarn. To market the output of Lancashire, “the merchants and warehousemen of Manchester and Liverpool, not to mention the marketing organization contained in other Lancashire towns, have a greater capital employed than that required in all the manufacturing industries of the cotton trade.” Accurate estimates of the proportion of “selling costs” to costs of technical production are doubtless impossible, for the general field of trade, and precision is unnecessary for my purposes. Dibblee’s conclusion, after contrasting retail and wholesale prices, and analyzing the expenses incurred in selling prior to the wholesale stage, is that the cost of marketing is at least equal to “real cost of production,” occasionally only slightly below it, and often far above it (62).¹ If one considers how large the item of “good will” often bulks in the value of “going concerns”²—good will being in large degree often just a capitalization of prior costs of this nature—Dibblee’s estimate need not be exaggerated. Trade connections, trade-marks that have reputation, etc., often represent enormous output in thought, work, and expense. Selling costs may, like other costs, be divided into “prime” and “overhead” costs. Some of the latter lead to long-time consequences, pay for themselves only in the long run. These may be “capitalized” in “good will.”³ Of course, not all good will is got at a cost. Much of it is adventitious.

In the light of the doctrine that trade is independent of money and credit, one wonders why it should be thought necessary to extend branches of American banks to the South American markets which we are now reaching out toward. And why have Americans, from the beginning, been constantly increasing commercial banks?⁴ It is easy to sneer at the efforts of the successive frontiers in our history to provide themselves with banks of issue as based on a delusion, the delusion that bank-notes are “capital,” and to say that their real need was, not more bank-credit, but more real capital. They needed more tools and livestock, doubtless, but is that the whole story? And were their banks of no assistance in getting the additional capital of various sorts? And was it a matter of no consequence that they had an abundant medium of exchange? It seems almost childish to put such questions, but the quantity theory has as its logical corollary that to multiply banks is quite useless and wasteful, since the only result is to raise prices. If increasing bank-credit cannot increase trade or production, this corollary is inevitable. Indeed, the case may be more strongly stated. Quite apart from the wasted labor of bank-clerks and the waste of banking capital, the effect of increasing bank-development, on quantity theory reasoning, is harmful. If increasing bank-credit is to raise prices without increasing trade, then, on quantity theory reasoning, it must depress business. The reason is that rising prices in a given region make that region a bad place to buy in, and so curtail its exports. This is, indeed, the quantity theory explanation of international trade, to which attention is later to be given. The country which is expanding its banking facilities most rapidly will suffer most in competition in the world markets. This is why the United States have so little foreign trade! It also explains the rapid strides that China and Central Africa have recently made in capturing the world’s markets. I submit that there is no flaw in this argument, if the premise of the independence of volume of trade and volume of bank-credit be granted. It follows from the quantity theory. That it is no caricature of Fisher’s argument will appear, I think, from the following quotation,¹ which very nearly states what I have just been saying, though it does not draw the conclusion that banking is a bad thing: “The invention of banking has made deposit currency possible, and its adoption has undoubtedly led to a great increase in deposits and consequent rise in prices. Even in the last decade the extension in the United States of deposit banking has been an exceedingly powerful influence in that direction. In Europe deposit banking is in its infancy.”¹ Happy Europe, troubled only by war! It is greatly to be hoped, in the interests of American agriculture, that the efforts to increase agricultural credit facilities will fail!

We are driven to one of the most fundamental contrasts in economic theory, which appears under various guises and in different forms: statics vs. dynamics; transition vs. equilibrium, theory of prosperity vs. theory of goods; normal tendency vs. “friction.”² Perhaps Professor Fisher, and the quantity theorist in general, would dismiss many of these considerations as not applicable to the general principle, which is a “normal” or “static” or “long run” law, not subject to considerations of this sort. It is scarcely open to Fisher to defend himself this way, because of his exceedingly uncompromising statement regarding even “transitional” relations between volume of trade and money and credit. I shall not reply to anyone who offers such an objection by a general tirade against “static economics.” I believe thoroughly in the method of economic abstraction, and in reaching general principles by ignoring, provisionally, in thought the “friction” and “disturbing tendencies” which often make the first approximations look somewhat unreal. But I raise this question: to what feature of our economic order do we chiefly owe it that we can make such abstractions? By virtue of what does friction disappear? What is it that makes our abstract picture of economic life, as a fluid equilibrium, with its nice marginal adjustments, its timeless logical relations, correspond as closely as it does to reality? The answer is: MONEY and CREDIT.¹

It is the business, the function, of money and credit, as instruments of exchange, to bring about the fluid market, to overcome friction, to effect rapid readjustments, to give verisimilitude to the static theory, to make the assumptions of the static theory come true. Where exchange is easy and friction slight, there will not be two prices for the same good in the same market. Speculators, seeking profits of fractions of a point, will prevent that. By multiplying exchanges, they will level off values and prices. Because money and credit have done their work so thoroughly in the “great market,” it is possible for men to talk about static theory, and to work out economic laws in abstraction from friction, transitions, and the like.

In the static state, all speculation is banished. There are no price-fluctuations to be smoothed out, no new prospects to be “discounted,” no uncertainties to be guarded against by “hedging.” Seasonal goods will, of course, have to be carried over from one season to the next, but this will involve merely warehousing and the use of capital—“time speculation,” involving many sales, does not come in. One sale to the capitalist who carries the seasonal goods, with a sale by him to the man who means to use them, will suffice. It has been shown before that the great bulk of trade is speculation. But speculation is banished from the static state. Speculation is a function of dynamic change, waxing and waning with the degree of uncertainty that exists, the new conditions to which readjustments have to be made, the “transitions” that have to be effected. In other words, the laws governing the volume of trade are dynamic laws, laws of “transition periods,” and so the whole notion which underlies the quantity theory, of “normal periods,” “static” relations, etc., is here irrelevant. Volume of trade, as distinguished from volume of production, is controlled by the number and extent of the “transitions” that have to be made. The chief work of money and credit is done in, and because of, “transition periods.” Assume a normal equilibrium accomplished, and you have little trading left to do. It will still be necessary, if you have the division of labor, and private enterprise, for goods to pass through as many different hands as there are different independent enterprisers in the stages of production, and on, through merchants, to the consumer. It will still be necessary to pay wages, rents, dividends and interest. But there will be no selling of lands, of houses, of factories, of railroads, or of securities representing these. By hypothesis these are already in the hands best qualified to hold them. The “static equilibrium” presents “mobility without motion, fluidity without flow.”¹ The static picture is a picture of completed adjustment, where no one has an incentive to change his work, or his investments, because he has already done the best that he can for himself. It is, therefore, a picture of a situation where there is little incentive for those exchanges which make up the great bulk of the volume of trade in real life.

Hence the curious phenomenon that very much of static theory has been developed in abstraction from money and credit. Mill’s theory of international values, for example, abstracts from money. “Since all trade is in reality barter, money being a mere instrument for exchanging things against one another, we will, for simplicity, begin by supposing the international trade to be in form, what it is in reality, an actual trucking of one commodity against another. So far as we have hitherto proceeded, we have found the laws of interchange to be essentially the same, whether money is used or not; money never governing, but always obeying, those general laws.”¹ Other writers have similarly held that money is a mere cloak, covering up the reality of the economic process. Schumpeter, for example, holds that money is, in the static analysis, merely a “Schleier,” and that “man nichts Wesentliches übersicht, wenn man davon abstrahiert.”²On the static as sumptions, of the fluid market, with friction, etc., banished, money is, indeed, anomalous and inexplicable. It is a cloak, a complication, a vexatious “epi-phenomenon.” There is nothing for it to do, and there can be, consequently, no “functional theory” developed for it. Static theory may be ungracious in ignoring its own foundation. But static theory is grotesque when it seeks to support its own foundation! Static theory is possible only on the assumption that the work of money and credit has been done. What, then, shall we say of static theory which seeks to explain the work of money and credit? Yet precisely this is what is undertaken by the quantity theory, with its “normal” or “static” laws of money and credit. A functional theory of money and credit must be a dynamic theory. To talk about the laws of money, “after the transition is completed” is to talk about the work money will do after it has finished working. For a functional theory of money and credit, we must study the obstacles that exist to prevent the fluid market. We must study friction, transitions, dynamic phenomena.

To this problem we shall come in Part III. For the present, I am content to have disproved the quantity theory contention that the volume of trade is independent of the quantity of money and credit.

¹Principles, I, 432.

²Loc. cit., pp. 432, 438–439.

³Ibid., p. 439. Cf. our chapter, supra, on “Volume of Money and Volume of Credit,” where Taussig’s view as to the relation of money and bank-credit is analyzed.

¹Loc. cit.

¹ Virtually the same expression is to be found in Barbour, David, The Standard of Value, London, 1912, p. 43. Barbour denies vigorously that more money can increase business, since it cannot increase the number of laborers, or of machines, or the amount of food, etc. The doctrine that volume of trade is fixed by (1) volume of products, and (2) degree of specialization of production, and hence is independent of volume of money, appears in Davenport, Econ. of Enterprise, 271–273.

¹ In this view, Fisher typifies the general position of the quantity theory, and, indeed, in part even of those who do not agree with the quantity theory, but who, with the quantity theorists, view the problems of money and banking as matters of static theory. High or low prices, once the transition is made, exhaust the effects of increasing or decreasing the money supply. During the period of transition, certain readjustments in relations between creditors and debtors arise, which lead to either temporary prosperity or temporary distress, but after the transition, it is a matter of indifference whether or not money is abundant. Though the view is, logically, an essential part of quantity theory reasoning, we find much of it vigorously maintained by Laughlin, Principles of Money, ch. on “Amount of Money Needed by a Country.” Laughlin and Fisher would seem to be at one in maintaining that the quantity of money in a country is a matter of indifference, and from the views of both would follow a condemnation of the idea that any long run consequences for volume of trade, efficiency of production, etc., could follow from increasing or decreasing the volume of money.

It may be just as well here to indicate the conviction of the present writer that the relation between the quantity theory and the bimetallic movement is historical rather than logical. Indeed, in laying the stress they did on the importance of an inadequate stock of money in accounting for the depression of the latter part of the 19th Century, the bimetallists were out of harmony with the quantity theory.

¹ P. 50.

² Pp. 358–372, vol. I.

³Loc. cit., p. 160. Cf. our chapter on “Barter.”

⁴ The fact that prices are often high in gold mining regions, as compared with prices in the general world markets, has been taken by many writers as proof of the quantity theory. Cf. Kemmerer, Money and Credit Instruments, pp. 50–51, 58; Cairnes, J. E., Essays in Political Economy, particularly the discussion of the Australian episode. It seems to me that this is particularly inconclusive. High prices characterize remote mining regions of all kinds, whether gold, silver, copper, diamonds, tin or what not be the quest. Prices are not lower in the tin and copper region in the northern part of the Seward Peninsula in Alaska than they are in the gold region about Nome in the southern part of that peninsula. They are high in both places, not because of the abundance of gold or of money, but because of the great value of goods, which have to be brought with great trouble and expense from the United States. They are higher in the region of the Saw Tooth Mountains, in the centre of this peninsula, where hydro-electric power for the use of the gold miners about Nome, and for the copper and tin mines further north, is being developed, than they are at Nome itself, on the coast, where the gold is being mined. They were high in Australia because the discovery of gold led everybody to abandon everything but gold mining, and to bring in virtually everything from a distance. Wooden beams were imported to Australia from Sweden! (Pierson, N. G., Principles of Economics, I, p. 389.) One would expect prices in gold money to be higher in a silver or copper mining region, which is prospering, than in a gold mining region, equally remote, where a great deal of gold is being mined, but at a cost too great to make the region prosperous.

¹Loc. cit., p. 51.

²Meaning of Money, p. 18.

¹ Price’s address before Western Econ. Asso’n, Nov. 26, 1915; Holt’s letter, Dec. 2.

²Loc. cit., p. 172.

¹ See our discussion of “money rates” and “interest rates,” supra, in the chapter on “Capitalization,” and infra, in the chapters on “The Functions of Money,” and on “Credit.”

¹Infra, chapter on “Functions of Money,” and supra, chapters on “Capitalization” and “Dodo-Bones.”

²Cf. our chapters on “Supply and Demand,” and “The Origin of Money.”

³ New York City can always use idle funds, “at a price.”

¹ Kemmerer, as well as Fisher, allows physical production and consumption to dominate his “index” of trade variation. Loc. cit., pp. 130–131; Fisher, loc. cit., p. 479. Cf. our discussion of their statistics, infra.

² This confusion of volume of trade and volume of production is a companion of the confusion discussed on p. 307, infra, of quantity of money with volume of money-income. The two confusions, found in virtually all expositions of the quantity theory, give it most of its plausibility.

¹Loc. cit., ch. 12, and appendix to ch. 12.

²Supra, ch. on “Equation of Exchange.”

¹ In a letter to the writer, Professor Fisher states that the figures for the physical receipts at the cities, which dominate his index for T, have not been available for recent years, and that since they were discontinued, he has relied chiefly on the indirect calculation of T via the other factors in the equation. These figures were discontinued in 1912. In the American Economic Review for June, 1916 (p. 457, n.) Professor Fisher states that the indirect calculation of T has always had more weight in his figures than the direct calculation. This would serve in some degree to lessen the errors of his index of variation. The extent to which he has allowed his T as directly calculated on the basis of the index to be modified by the indirect calculation, is indicated on p. 302 of the Purchasing Power of Money, as follows: “The alterations in T, as shown in Figure 16, though still greater than the preceding, are nevertheless so small and uniform as to preserve an almost perfect parallelism between the original and the altered curve. The differences rarely exceed 10%.” Even an indirect calculation of T, however, would not avoid the criticisms here urged, since the other factors, MV, M′V′, and P are all, as we shall see in the chapter on “Statistical Demonstrations of the Quantity Theory,” calculated by methods which give very excessive weight to trade outside New York City and to non-speculative transactions.

²Loc. cit., p. 485.

¹The Use of Credit Instruments in Payments, Senate Document No. 399, 61st Congress, 2nd Session.

² This brief account will be amplified for critical discussion in the statistical chapter below. Fisher in fact calculated MV and M′V′ separately. The account above given is strictly accurate only for that part of T, 353 billions, which is carried on by means of checks. The calculation of MV, however, is also based on Kinley’s figures. My account here is adequate for the question at issue, which is, not as to the absolute magnitude of trade, but rather, as to the proportions of speculation and other elements in trade.

¹ The substance of the argument here presented first appeared in articles in the Annalist, to which I am indebted for permission to use it here. See the numbers of Feb. 7, March 6, and March 20, 1916. Professor Fisher’s replies, directed wholly against the charge of double counting, appeared in the Annalist of Feb. 21 and March 13, 1916. Professor Fisher does not question my contention that speculation makes up the overwhelming bulk of trade, in these replies. He rather seeks to meet the charge of overcounting by holding that bank-transactions do not fully count speculation! This he thinks particularly true of stock exchange transactions. Cf. his article of Feb. 21, 1916.

² The Census Bureau figures have been subject to a good deal of criticism, and I therefore refrain from trying to draw precise conclusions from them.

¹ The figures showing the number of banks reporting from each State, together with the number of reports rejected, will be found on pp. 47–49 of his monograph. The figures above are combinations of figures from his various tables. These tables are so carefully indexed in Dean Kinley’s monograph that detailed page references are unnecessary here.

¹Cf. our discussion of this topic in the statistical chapter, infra.

¹Loc. eit., pp. 153–154.

²Discussions in Economics and Statistics, 1, 204. Quoted by Kinley, loc. cit., 152.

³ The coefficient of correlation has been developed by the biologists, chiefly Karl Pearson, but has been applied to problems in many fields, especially economics, sociology, psychology, and education. A good source is Yule’s Introduction to the Theory of Statistics. Professor II. L. Moore has made extensive use of the method in his Laws of Wages, and his Economic Cycles.

Connected with the coefficient of correlation, usually, is a figure for “probable error,” which depends, primarily, on the square root of the number of observations. When the probable error is low, and the coefficient of correlation high (as .8), it is commonly supposed that a very high degree of causal connection is established. I shall not go into detail in discussion of the method. My personal judgment is that it is overrated, that “spurious” correlations, leading to quite erroneous conclusions, have frequently resulted from it, and that the labor involved in calculating coefficients of correlation is frequently too great for the results obtained. I should never be disposed to accept conclusions based on a “correlation coefficient” unless there were other converging evidence to support it. In effect we have, in the coefficient of correlation, nothing more than a refinement of the method of comparing two curves on a graph. The curves tell the story, in a general way, whereas the coefficient of correlation sums up all the comcomitant variations (and disagreements) in one figure. The eye does not readily compare the degree of relation between two curves with the degree of relation between two others. When it is desired to know which, of several relationships, is closest, the graphic method, or the method of comparing series of figures, burdens the attention. The coefficient of correlation condenses the information to such a degree as to make comparison easy. It is, then, merely a refinement of familiar statistical methods. Used wisely, guided by sound theory, it aids in presenting facts. It enables us to state quantitatively things we already know qualitatively. But there is no magic in it! As I have mentioned both Mr. Silberling and Professor Moore in this connection, it is proper to say that both of them are fully alive to the dangers and limitations of the method, and that Professor Moore emphasizes strongly the need for sound a priori testing of hypotheses before submitting them to the test of correlation. One danger, that of getting a high correlation merely because both of the variables compared are growing rapidly, has been avoided by Mr. Silberling by the use of successive percentage deviations, instead of absolute figures. For reasons explained by Mr. Silberling in a footnote, he uses, instead of the “probable error,” a statement of the number of observations. Thus, “r = .78 (46)” means that the coefficient of correlation is .78, and that there are 46 observations for each of the two variables compared.

¹ They get into clearings, however, two days after.

¹ Professor Kemmerer, also. See his index of variation of trade, op. cit., pp. 130–131.

² It is unfortunate that weekly figures from railways do not exist in such number, or for roads of sufficient importance, to justify correlations of the weekly figures with clearings.

¹ Professor W. M. Persons informs me that Mr. Silberling’s results are in accord with calculations which he has made. Vide his article in the Am. Econ. Rev. of Dec. 1916.

¹The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, New York, 1915.

² Sec our chapter, “Statistical Demonstrations of the Quantity Theory.”

¹Loc. cit., pp. 78–79.

¹Jour, of Polit. Econ., vol. v, p. 165.

² Even this is too high, for 1909, on the basis of our estimate for net income in 1909, in the Appendix to this chapter.

¹ The extent of speculation in wholesale trade is discussed in this chapter, infra. “ Double counting “is discussed in the chapter on “Statistical Demonstrations of the Quantity Theory.”

²The Use of Credit Instruments, p. 151.

¹ The figures for rent and wages are from W. I. King, op. cit. The other figures are from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, unless otherwise stated. King’s estimates are for 1910. The other figures are for 1909. Compare this list with my discussion in the Annalist, March 6, 1916, p. 317, where I made computations purposely much too large. In that computation I clearly greatly exaggerated salaries and professional incomes, and rent as well as retail and wholesale trade. My figure there included the rent of houses as well as the rent of land. King’s figure is only for land rent. However, in view of the fact that a high percentage of real estate is used by the owner, with the result that no rent-payments are required, I think King’s figure high enough for the whole item.

¹ Professor Fisher has estimated total real estate exchanges in the country at less than 1% of the total 387 billions (op. cit., p. 226), and a colleague of the Harvard Business School has given me an estimate of $1,300,000,000 for total advertising in the United States. Neither of these items is properly counted part of the “static” trade that would occur were things in “normal equilibrium.” If, however, we counted them, we should add only 1%, say, of the total. When it is seen how insignificant, in comparison with the 387 billions indicated by deposits, the figures for total manufactures, total farm products, and total wages, are, there really is little need to argue the case. It is impossible to find, in the “ordinary trade” we have not mentioned, items whose total will equal the least of these three. Moreover, we have allowed for a multitude of these items in permitting the figure for retail trade to be as high as it is, and have left large leeway in making no deduction for the speculation in wholesale trade, and in counting farm products in full. Interest and dividends I have not counted. They are not “trade.” When we have counted stock sales, we have already counted the exchanges in which dividends were sold. The man who buys the stocks has already bought the dividends. To count the dividends in addition would be a case of that double counting of capital and income against which Professor Fisher has warned us in his Nature of Capital and Income. Rents and wages represent payment for current services, and are properly items of trade. Interest and dividends are one-sided money payments, completing transactions for which money has already passed, and in which a man is merely getting a delivery of something he has already bought. In general, loans and repayments are not properly counted as part of ordinary, or physical trade. If, however, we counted total corporate dividends and interest we should get only $4,781,000,000 (King’s estimate, loc. cit., p. 262). This is a little over 1%. What else is there? In his article of March 13, 1916, in the Annalist, Professor Fisher failed to meet my suggestion that a bill of particulars was called for!

¹ See the table of shares and approximate values in Pratt’s Work of Wall Street, 1912 ed., p. 187. This table covers the years, 1890–1911.

¹ Boston Transcript, “Tape Record of Sales Incomplete,” May 6, 1916, Pt. I, p. 12. The Transcript quotes as authority the New York Commercial. Following the extraordinary market of Sept. 25, 1916, when the ticker recorded 2,317,000 shares sold on the New York Stock Exchange, the newspapers estimated that missed sales, odd lots, and unrecorded sales on stop loss orders, would bring the total above 3,000,000 shares. There was an unusual number of stop orders caught that day. There will be very few other sales of 100 shares missed by the ticker, except in times of extraordinary pressure. See Boston Herald, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 1.

¹ Hollander, J. H., Bank Loans and Stock Exchange Speculation, Senate Document 589, 61st Congress, 2d Session, p. 23.

¹ Pratt, Work of Wall Street, 1912 ed., p. 264.

²Annalist, Dec. 27, 1915, p. 719—“Selling Phantom Grain.”

¹ My information regarding the Coffee Exchange in New York comes from the Treasurer of the Exchange, Mr. Jas. H. Taylor, through the courtesy of Mr. W. H. Aborn, of Aborn and Cushman, New York.

² Report of the Hughes Commission, in appendix to Pratt’s Work of Wall Street, Rev. ed., p. 417. This report gives information regarding all the organized exchanges in New York.

³ L. Conant, Jr., “The United States Cotton Futures Act,” American Economic Review, March, 1915, p. 1.

⁴ Hughes Commission, loc. eit., p. 418.

¹ Taussig, Principles of Economics, I, p. 405; Kinley, Report of the Comptroller for 1896, p. 89.

² This is probably more extensive in London than in the United States.

¹Loc. cit., p. 47.

²Loc. cit., pp. 130–131. The very title, “growth of business,” suggests the fallacy to which we refer in the text, namely, that we have a steady upward movement, with little variation. This is largely true of production and consumption. It is in no sense true of “trade,” as distinguished from production.

¹ Kemmerer relied on the investigation of 1896, whereas Fisher used more the figures of 1909. Kemmerer does not, in general, assign an absolute magnitude for “trade,” but for 1890 he gives a figure. Loc. cit., p. 136. d.

²Loc. cit., p. 136, d.

¹ A recent discussion of these problems is to be found in Shaw, A. W., Some Problems in Market Distribution, Harvard Univ. Press, 1915.

²Op. cit., pp. 51–52.

³ London, Paris, and New York all do a great deal of manufacturing, particularly of finer things, whose value is high, and which require a high proportion of labor, as compared with machinery. Cf. our discussion of the London “Money Market,” infra, in Part III.

⁴Ibid., p. 47.

¹Cf. Jenks, The Trust Problem, Rev. ed., p. 29. The doctrine that these costs are net social loss is challenged by the present writer in an article, “Competition vs. Monopoly,” in the New York Independent, of Oct., 1912.

² “Royal” has been estimated at $5,000,000; “Spearmint” at $100,000,000. Mr. Guy C. Hubbard, of the Dry Goods Economist, New York, has given the writer some exceedingly interesting data regarding the value, as bankable collateral, of various trade-marks and firm names.

³Cf. our discussion of “The Reconciliation of Statics and Dynamics,” infra.

⁴ Significant in this connection, is the contention of recent students of American agriculture, that the great need is better organization and credit, facilities for marketing.

¹Loc. cit,, p. 89. Though Fisher does not conclude that banking is bad, he does conclude that gold mining is a parasitic and socially injurious industry, like the making of burglars’ “jimmies.” See his Elementary Principles of Economics, N. Y., 1912, pp. 499–500.

¹ Fisher does admit that the character of the banking system, and of the money system, will affect the volume of trade. “There have been times in the history of the world when money was in so uncertain a state that people hesitated to make many contracts because of the lack of knowledge of what would be required of them when the contract should be fulfilled. In the same way, when people cannot depend on the good faith or stability of banks, they will hesitate to use deposits and checks “(78). But there is nowhere an admission that the amount of bank-credit has any influence on the volume of trade, and there are repeated assertions, as already instanced in the text, that the volume of trade is quite independent of the volume of money and bank-credit.

² Part IV of this book gives a detailed analysis to the problems involved in these contrasts.

¹ This thesis was set forth by the present writer at the 1915 meeting of the American Economic Association. See Papers and Proceedings, Supplement to March, 1916, Amer. Econ. Rev., pp. 168–169.

¹Cf. J. B. Clark, Distribution of Wealth, passim, and J. Schumpeter, Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, pp. 1–101. See also the present writer’s “Schumpeter’s Dynamic Economics,” Pol. Sci. Quart., Dec, 1915, and A. S. Johnson, in Quart. Jour. of Econ., May, 1914.

¹Principles, Bk. III, ch. xviii, par. 1.

²Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, p. 77. Since the foregoing was written, Professor W. C. Mitchell has presented an admirable historical paper on “The Rôle of Money in Economic Theory,” in which he has multiplied instances, in the history of the science, of this contempt for money, or abstraction from money, in economic theory. He finds that Marshall, and some other later writers, have given much fuller recognition to the rôle of money, which he conceives of primarily as an institution which has rationalized economic behavior, by forcing upon the individual book-keeping habits of thought. This still leaves it legitimate to abstract from money, however, for “pure theory.” Highly important as is the “measure of values” function, it does not explain the main work which money, as money, actually does in economic life, nor need it be a source of value for money. Cf., infra, our chapter on “The Functions of Money.” Professor Mitchell’s paper will be found in “Papers and Proceedings,” Supplement to the March, 1916, number of the Am. Econ. Rev.