264 THE REGULATION OF THE CURRENCY

abolish the equipment with which he has already
provided industry. But if we make his life too
hard he can strike like the rest of us, and by refusing
to provide for any further expansion in industrial
equipment, he can hold up production until we have
devised some new method of laying up capital.
Currency depreciation is good for the debtor and
bad for the creditor; if it goes too far it kills the
creditor and reduces business to chaos.

We are a very long way from the chaos to which
many of our Continental neighbours have already
reduced their monetary systems; but there is
fortunately a very general feeling that we are a
country with a reputation and a prestige on this
point; and the business world is growing restive
concerning the delay on the part of those responsible
in putting an end to a state of things which may have
been justified by the war's exigencies (though there
is much to be said for the view that in fact it only
added to the war's difficulties) but is now clearly
as out of date as the censorship, which, like it,
nevertheless, continues to flourish. This state of
things arises from the arrangement under which an
unlimited supply of legal tender currency can be
manufactured by the Government, which encouraged
to continue the system by the fact that each note
issued is in effect a loan to itself without interest,
At the meeting of Barclays Bank on January 27th,
Mr Goodenough demanded that the issue of currency
notes by the Government should be stopped forth-
with, and that if it were necessary to provide more
currency it would be better for the banks to be