Page:Bankers and Credit (1924).pdf/196

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Mr. Kitson, however, has no such doubts. "Since," he says, "sales were limited by the amount of money or credit offered, it followed that production was necessarily limited by the quantity of money and credit available for commercial purposes." It did not seem to occur to him that a larger volume of production might easily have been carried on with the same amount of money by a readjustment of the price level. But after all, what has happened since then has quite sufficiently answered Mr. Kitson. If unlimited money was all that was needed to secure abounding prosperity, it ought now to be evident in Russia, whose inhabitants are in fact living in a state of economic chaos that appals all who contemplate it. Mr. Kitson would doubtless reply that circumstances in Russia were exceptional. In his view "the average business man is growing tired of having to go hat in hand to solicit 'favours'" (referring to getting accommodation from banks) "which he claims should be given to him as a legal right." This may be so, but most business men of my acquaintance see very clearly that if everybody had a legal right to as much credit from the banks as he thought fit to demand the amount of credit created would in times of optimistic exhilaration so rapidly outstrip the supply of