ent purchasing power; this decline resulting from the enormous inflation that took place during the war. Beyond that, the dealer in commodities has the problem of replacing these commodities and making the necessary calculations to do so many times a year. He has to be always "guessing," and, in a vast majority of cases, he guesses wrong, and so ultimately fails. Perhaps, indeed, the most vital error is in confusing "price" with "value." A great number of indictments under the Lever Act are pending from this very mistake. The proof that a man has paid one price and has charged a hundred per cent. more and upward for the same goods, standing alone, really means absolutely nothing. The real question is whether he has properly guessed what the replacement price will be; and that, of course, he can only do, in most cases, by mere surmise. His wealth consists in his commodities, and he is going straight to ruin, if deceived by the depreciation of the counters of exchange, he fail not to replace that real wealth with a sum fully adequate to secure an equivalent amount. A Pacific Coast Judge on this account has just, very properly, directed a verdict where the illusory profit was apparently one hundred and fifty per cent. of the cost price. That the price of goods is not the wealth, but that the goods themselves are, and that the price is but a method of exchanging wealth for real wealth—that is, other goods—is an indisputable axiom of political economy. But let us again test this by the example of sugar, which we have heretofore used, taking that example for the additional fact that a great part of the facts actually are of record.
Suppose a refiner has a stock worth ten million dollars with the price five cents a pound. Suppose that price from his best guess, is going to advance, or does ad-
