The Dollar to-day is a different measure from the Dollar of yesterday. - Edgar Lawrence Smith

Labor seeking higher wages is, in part, attacking the value of the dollar; farmers seeking higher prices for their products and eager to pay off the mortgage on the farm are, in part, assailing the value of the dollar; tariff protected industries join in reducing the purchasing power of the dollar. All debtors favor a depreciating dollar.

"Safety of principal," yes—that is the first essential. But what is "principal"—is it merely the obligation of some sound organization to repay a certain number of fluctuating measures of value at a future date? What if, at the date of repayment, the measure has shrunk to one-half of its present size? Has the principal been safeguarded?

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with some, at least, of the various conceptions of the business cycle currently discussed by economists. These are summarized, in greater detail than is necessary for our present purposes, in Mitchell's "Business Cycles, The Problem and the Setting" (1927), and King's "The Cause of Economic Fluctuations" (1938); the latter being noteworthy for its sympathetic reference to those who have found it necessary to push their search for the underlying causes of business cycles beyond the limits customarily regarded as the boundaries of the economic field.