do well to begin early by making himself thoroughly familiar. The following is one of the principal. There is such a thing as a general rise of prices. All commodities may rise in their money price, but there cannot be a general rise of values. It is a contradiction in terms. * * * Things which are exchanged for one another can no more all fall, or all rise, than a dozen runners can each outrun all the rest. * * * That the money prices of all things should rise or fall, provided they all rise or fall equally, is, in itself, and apart from existing contracts, of no consequence. * * * It makes no other difference than that of using more or fewer counters to reckon by. The only thing which in this case is really altered in value, is money." Well did Lord Coke say: "Certainty is the mother of quietness and repose," or, as has so well been said by the Supreme Court in the International Harvester case:[1] "Value is the effect in exchange of the relative social desire for compound objects expressed in terms of a common denominator. * * * But what it would be * * * with exclusion of the actual effect of other abnormal influences, and, it would seem with exclusion also of any increased efficiency in the machines, * * * is a problem that no human ingenuity could solve."
With our currency's purchasing power of commodities falling to but thirty-five per cent. of its prior value, as has been pointed out by Professor Fisher, the making of these mere counters,—this mere facility for turning the trade in commodities, not only a test, but the final and sole test is not reasonable. In a prior chapter it has been shown how inevitably ruin would follow if business men bought on "real value," and were com-
- ↑ International Harvester Co. vs. Kentucky, 234 U. S. 216 (see page 222). 1914.
