Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/39

Rh fares, for instance, remained the traditional five cents through two decades of rising prices.

5. Periods before and after 1896 Contrasted. Before 1896 the "bloated bondholder" was gaining. Money lenders like Russell Sage rolled up wealth. They could not have done so after 1896. Even had they saved every penny of interest and compounded it, they would have had less actual purchasing power now than when they started. The newly rich to-day are not bondholders but stockholders.

6. The Fault Is Not Personal but Social, so that we ought not to blame the lucky winners in the lottery but abolish the lottery.

7. Two Illustrative Cases. A working girl who in 1896 put a hundred dollars in the savings bank and let it accumulate at 3% would now have nominally twice what she put in, but prices are more than two and a half times what they were in 1896. Likewise the bondholder has had no real interest. He has cut his coupons and cashed them, but his principal, nominally intact, is, in actual purchasing power, less than half what it was. He has been, in effect, eating up his capital.

8. The Extent of Social Injustice. Probably a hundred billions of dollars' worth of purchasing power have actually, though not nominally, changed hands since 1896 through the depreciation of the dollar.

9. Uncertainty. Such losses would be largely forestalled if they could be foreseen. But few except speculators even try to foresee price movements. The chief evil of an unstable dollar is its uncertainty.

10. Trade Cycles. When prices rise, great profits lead to overextension of business and credits and