same time in the Autumn of 1921, to need a saw for domestic purposes, went into one of the best tool shops in the City and got what seemed to be an excellent weapon at a reasonable price. Then I noticed on the blade the name of an American maker and observed to the shopkeeper that it seemed queer, with the dollar below four to the pound and thousands of unemployed in Sheffield, that we should be buying American saws. He evidently understood about the dollar exchange and what it meant, for he said that it certainly was queer and what was queerer still was that in spite of all that we read about slackness in Sheffield he could not get half the tools that he wanted from English manufacturers, and was glad enough to be able to get some from America, while the Sheffield people were thinking about beginning to wake up.
It was thus evident that currency depreciation among its trade rivals was by no means the only cause that was depressing British trade. My excellent American saw had probably been sold here cheap because its maker had the sense to see that the way to set trade going again was to get prices down and give the poor old public—bled white by the tax-gatherer and the wage earner and the captain of industry—a chance of buying some cheap goods and feeling
