Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/73

. 6] war in Japan, it is not likely that there will also be war in India. A world-war or even anything as near to a world-war as the recent conflict is a most—the most—unprecedented event in all history.

Our conclusion is that, so far as the argument from probability can help us, it is not likely that the simultaneous rises and falls of hundreds of commodities happen merely by coincidence. It is much more likely that there is one common cause or, at most, a very few common causes. We find two such common causes at hand, monetary depreciation and (since 1914) the war, which, as we shall see, has affected prices chiefly through monetary depreciation also. If these are not the common causes, what are they?

The same question arose concerning the general fall of prices between 1873 and 1896. Then there was another explanation besides the monetary one—the increased or cheaper production through invention. But while in the period from 1873 to 1896 this cause, cheaper production, worked with the trend, a downward price movement, from 1896 to 1913 it has worked against the trend. No common cause for the upward trend of prices between 1896 and 1913—except money—has ever been suggested or seems likely to be.

6. The Argument from Statistics

So much for the mere probabilities of the case. But we have several other lines of evidence. First there is the evidence of direct statistics, which evidence points to the same conclusion. These statistics show that, up to the outbreak of the war in 1914, there was no