Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/28

 existence, including gold, and causing a rise in prices with the evil consequences above set forth.

Such was the great advantage for purposes of use at home of a money based on a metal which the Government could not multiply at will. Perhaps even greater was its benefit in the field of foreign commerce. If stability of prices is a blessing when we buy and sell goods and services to one another, it is still more so when we buy and Sell abroad, if only because the transactions of foreign trade take a longer time to carry through and so involve longer credits. The merchant who is selling goods to China or Peru and may have to wait months before he gets his money, is not encouraged to do so if he finds that by the time he gets his money, it has so much less buying power than he expected when he shipped the goods, that he has made a loss on the bargain instead of reaping a pleasant profit.

When once the stability of prices is undermined by too much money being printed this may happen even to English merchants who have stipulated for payment in English money. But when payment is made in foreign money and foreign governments are working the printing press even more vigorously than ours,