then the problem becomes complicated by violent movements in "exchange," that is in the value of other moneys as expressed in pounds. Instability and uncertainty play a duet with a crescendo movement that ends in a crash of hideous discord. As everyone knows these things have happened on a scale which has reduced foreign trade to a blind gamble and made more evident than ever the blessings that were secured to us by the gold standard, as used by us and the other economically civilized countries.
For they also had currencies which were more or less convertible into gold. It was always the boast of England that only in England did we enjoy ready convertibility, that only here could any holder of a monetary claim rely with certainty on being able to convert it into gold on demand. Nevertleless, though in other centres convertibility may not have been as free and certain and quick as it was here, it was at least the ostensible basis of the monetary System, and when the System was squeezed steadily enough it had to part with gold. When, during the crisis of 1907, the Bank of England put its official rate up to 7 per cent. and so exerted really severe pressure on all the countries of the world to send their gold, which
