the latter as under the existing system" (pages 16, 17).
This proposal for expanding and contracting the currency by debt redemption and debt issue might evidently be difficult and expensive to work and recent experience has shown that it is possible for an expansion of currency to coincide with a heavy fall in prices. But all this question of the possibility of keeping prices steady by expanding currency and credit like a concertina will have to be discussed more fully later on. We should have been glad of more light on it from Professor Soddy, for it is not really quite as simple as he seems to think. He says that he "will be asked by those who are unaware of the proposals made by Gesell on the Continent and by Kitson in this country, how is it possible to fix the purchasing power of money? The answer is simple enough: By fixing it, that is, by printing more as average prices, determined by Index Numbers, tend to fall and by withdrawing it from circulation as they tend to rise." This may be a "simple enough" answer, but as will be seen practice might be rather more difficult than precept. And one feels all the more confidence in doubting whether the Professor is really well-informed on the subject about which he lays down the law with such magnificent conviction, when one
