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 the past and have handed on the proceeds to their heirs.

At first sight the economic advantage of the community lies in making things comfortable for producers and distributors, in other words, for debtors, and if we cannot achieve perfect stability a moderate amount of currency depreciation has something to be said for it, as long as we can be certain of putting on the brake at the right time and as long as we do not inflict too much hardship upon the creditor class and frighten them out of existence. For though the economic service which they render to the community is less obvious than that of the producers and distributors—so much so that many of the rather hasty "reformers" of our economic system blandly dub the capitalist a thief—the fact remains that without the accumulation of capital economic progress is impossible; and it will not be wise to frighten the private capitalist out of existence until we are quite sure that we have secured a substitute that will do the work equally well of providing capital for the further expansion of industry.

Moreover, as will be seen later, the process of currency depreciation, once started, is very difficult to check, and if it is reversed with a jerk is likely to produce even worse disasters