Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/192

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Chapter VI
Critics and Suggestions

Not only did the effects of the war on our currency and banking system stir to fresh efforts those who had always wanted to reform it, they also produced a host of new critics with new suggestions for its improvement. They may be divided roughly into three classes: those who find the way to economic salvation in unlimited issue of paper money which they generally call by some other name; those whose doctrine and intention are vague or incomprehensible; and those who want, either with or without a return to the gold standard, to set up machinery by which the level of prices is to be kept steady through official, and sometimes international, regulation of the volume of credit.

In considering the doctrines put forward by these several classes we are faced with the difficulty that it is not always easy and it is sometimes quite impossible for ordinary folk to understand what currency reformers really want to do, and it is also interesting to note