Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/112

58

The evils both of rising and of falling prices are well illustrated by two recent sharply contrasted periods: that from 1873 to 1896 and that from 1896 to the close of the Great War.

Prices were falling during the first of these two periods. People who had things to sell—the farmer and the active business man—complained that their profits were being cut down or entirely wiped out; for the prices of their products kept falling while many of the charges they had to meet—interest, rent, etc.—remained fixed. On the other hand, people who had money to lend—the "bloated bondholder" and the "dead hand" (estates, foundations, hospitals, endowed churches and universities, for instance)—were coming to "own the earth." Their money incomes were fixed, but each dollar would buy more and more every year. For the same reason salaried clerks were waxing fat and comfortable.

But from 1896 to the present, with prices rising instead of falling, the luck changed. The creditor, in his various guises of bondholder, savings-bank depositor, lessor, salaried man, and wage earner, became the victim; while the stockholder, the farmer, the business "enterpriser," and the bull speculator were the winners in the lottery. In a word, good luck befell the man who took what was left after paying a nearly fixed number of dollars (each with a diminished purchasing power) for his operating expenses,—his interest, rent, salaries, wages, etc.

Before the war, the loss to the creditor was proceeding at the rate of nearly three per cent per annum.