discloses a complete lack of inquiry into the economic law of the case, the necessity of which Mr. Justice Holmes has pointed out in the Harvester and Northern Securities cases, as referred to hereinafter.
The result has been that the lower Courts have had difficulty in reconciling the decisions of the Supreme Court in the Nash[1] case and the International Harvester case,[2] although economic law entirely vindicates the results reached by the Supreme Court in both cases. The present purpose, therefore, is to inquire into this vital though neglected part of the subject; to call attention to the economic truths that money and credit fluctuate as much, and often more, than commodities; again to point out that continuing trade is, in substance, only its original form of barter; to show that an exchange of a commodity for money constitutes but a single step, the second and most vital step being the replacement of the commodity with the money thus obtained. That this second step is really the determinative one; and that a continuing business is but a continuing repetition of these cycles from commodity back to commodity, which does not chiefly consist of money, but in which money is merely a device for facilitating the barter. That past years, as well as future years, are necessarily involved in the matter; and the measurement of the risks and the necessity for constant replacement present problems of such ever varying uncertainties that, as has been pointed out in the International Harvester case, it is beyond the power of the human mind to measure them, with any judicial degree of certainty!
In other words, that the exploded "mercantile sys-
