Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/40

xxxvi to a crisis, after which contraction leads to a fall of prices and depression of trade. The unstable dollar is a fundamental element in these cycles.

11. Resentment and Violence. The fact that the evil effects of an unstable dollar are usually not attributed to their true cause results in suspicion, class hatred, and violence.

12. Falling as Well as Rising Prices Cause Discontent. E.g. before 1896 the western farmer hated the eastern capitalist whose mortgages he found increasing in weight owing, he thought, to some manipulation of the market of money or produce or both.

13. War Prices Cause Discontent. Before the war the rising cost of living was making Socialists, and the fear of class war within Germany was one reason for precipitating a war with other nations. Likewise the rise of prices during the war is a chief cause of the popular unrest we now find.

14. Adjustments Most Needed, the Most Unpopular. E.g. railways and landlords have long suffered from the rise of prices, but the public has all the more strenuously opposed a corresponding rise of their rates or rents. Even the employer who has gained by rising prices often opposes a corresponding rise of wages. Everybody opposes the rise of anybody else's charges, because they have their minds set on a general reduction. As a general reduction is impossible it is better to level up the few prices which are too low relatively to the rest.

15. Bad Remedies. The public fails to understand the cause of price movements, but it sees who has made money out of them at the expense of others and seeks a remedy against these winners. Every remedy