in the matter of currency chaos were much less devastating in their effects. With us the highest point, touched by the prices of commodities, which is the rough measure of the debasement of the buying power of our money, showed, as marked by the Economist Index Number, a multiplication in the course of nearly six years by a mere trifle of 3¼ as compared with the pre-war average, and in the course of the next two years this 3¼ was divided by two. Taking 100 as the figure for the general level of the prices of goods in July 1914, March 1920 recorded 325 and February 1922 showed that the average had come back to 166.
The effect of this rapid backward swing was in some ways much more disconcerting to industry than that of the previous rise, which had, while it lasted, greatly simplified the problems of production and commerce by ensuring a continuous advance in paper profits to all who held a stock of goods. But even the uncomfortable effects of this inconveniently rapid fall were preferable to the sapping of the foundations of the economic fabric that would have been involved by the continued progress of the process of debasement. Indeed, when we think of all that has happened to the
