quicker than its effect on domestic prices and rates of wages, which are largely a matter of habit and convention, and are only shifted after a new and gradual process of awakening. Thus the exporter who is paid in foreign currencies, turns them into a rapidly increasing amount of his home money, which has lost value at home much more slowly than it has abroad.
To make the matter clear by a concrete and extreme example, if we suppose that German currency was doubled in one night, its value in pounds sterling would be halved much more quickly than its value in goods and wages in Germany. And so the Solingen manufacturer who was selling safety razors in England for a shilling would be able to turn his shilling into 100 marks instead of 50, long before the prices of the goods and labour that he bought at home had risen pari passu and so he would be able, if competition made it desirable, to take a much lower price in England and still make a profit at the expense of his employees whom he would be paying in money that had lost value, without their demanding more of it. If he took a lower price in England the British Consumer would benefit and the English manufacturer of safety razors would justly complain that he was being subjected to unfair competi-
