The Purchasing Power of Money/Preface 2

by Irving Fisher

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

PS.1
THE second edition is a reprint of the first with the following changes:—

1. Correction of occasional misprints.
2. Addition of data for 1910, 1911, and 1912, in the tables on pages 304, 317, and the diagram between pages 306 and 307.
3. A change in Figure 1 (page 13) to make it conform to the facts for 1912.
4. Changes in the table on page 147 with accompanying text to make the data correspond to the facts for 1912.
5. The insertion of an addendum on pages 492-493, giving the revised figures for deposits subject to check as calculated by Professor Wesley Clair Mitchell.
6. An appendix to the second edition (page 494 ff.) on "standardizing the dollar."
PS.2
For corrections of misprints and various helpful criticisms of the first edition I am under great obligations to a number of friends and correspondents and particularly to Major W. E. McKechnie, of the Indian Medical Service, Etawah, United Provinces, India; Professor Warren M. Persons, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colo.; Mr. J. M. Keynes, Editor, Economic Journal, Kings College, Cambridge; Carl Snyder, author, New York City; James Bonar, Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, Ottawa, Canada; Professor Allyn A. Young, Washington University, St. Louis, Mo.; Professor Stephen Bauer, Director, International Office of Labor Legislation, Basle, Switzerland; Professor Wesley Clair Mitchell, New York City; Professor O. M. W. Sprague, Harvard University.

PS.3
I have endeavored to avoid disturbing the plates of the first edition more than was absolutely necessary. Otherwise I should have been glad to incorporate some changes to make use of some valuable but general criticisms. In particular I should have liked to modify somewhat the statement of the theory of crises in Chapter IV and in Chapter XI to make use of the helpful criticism of Miss Minnie Throop England, of the University of Nebraska, in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1912; also to meet a criticism of Mr. Keynes' to the effect that, while my book shows that the changes in the quantity of money do affect the price level, it does not show how they do so. To those who feel the need of a more definite picture of how the price level is affected by a change in the quantity of money I refer the reader to my Elementary Principles of Economics, pages 242-247, and to other writers on this subject, particularly Cairns.

IRVING FISHER.



SUGGESTIONS TO READERS
SR.1
1. The general reader will be chiefly interested in Chapters I-VIII.
SR.2
2. The cursory reader will find the gist of the book in Chapter II.
SR.3
3. Objectors to the quantity theory will find their theoretical and statistical objections discussed in Chapters VIII and XII respectively.
SR.4
4. Students of financial history should read Chapter XII.
SR.5
5. Currency reformers should read Chapter XIII.
SR.6
6. The appendices are addressed mainly (though not exclusively) to mathematical economists, for whom the chief interest will probably lie with the Appendix to Chapter X, on Index Numbers, (which should be read as a whole,) and § 6 of the Appendix to Chapter XII, on the Method of Determining Velocity of Circulation.
SR.7
7. The remainder of the Appendix to Chapter XII is supplied chiefly in order that statistical critics may be enabled to verify the processes described in the text.
SR.8
8. Chapter X and its Appendix are of chief interest to students of index numbers, a subject as fascinating to some as it is dry to others.
SR.9
9. The analytical table of contents, the index, and the running page headings have been constructed with especial reference to the varying needs of different classes of readers.
SR.10
The book is, however, designed to constitute a complete whole, and it is hoped that as many as possible of those who approach it from special view points may, in the end, read it all.