306 
INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
Ba 
ol a 
Even tho it be not easy to ascertain just how large are the sums 
involved, it can at least be known whether they exist and whether 
they are becoming larger or smaller. But it is almost impossible to 
put one’s finger on a specific increase of demand; verification is 
almost hopeless. In the present puzzling case I see no way of test- 
ing whether the swelling exports from the United States were to any 
noticeable extent the results of an increase of demand. It may be 
that a change of this kind set in, by the merest chance, at the very 
time when the heavier remittances had to be made. The two 
forces would then tend to neutralize each other, that of increasing 
demand being reinforced by the working of the protective duties. 
The growing exports from the United States, and especially those 
of manufactured goods, may signify that there was an increase of 
demand from foreign countries; and they may thus constitute a 
factor which, if standing by itself, would have tended to bring 
gold into the country and to make the barter terms of trade more 
advantageous. Or they may signify merely that the barter terms, 
ander the pressure for growing remittances to foreign countries, 
were becoming less advantageous and that this pressure caused 
commodities of any and every sort to be exported in greater 
quantities. There is no way of testing what was cause and what 
effect. 
The topic is speculative. We have a characteristic case of con- 
fused outcome. Different forces have worked in different direc- 
tions, and it is impossible to discern what is the quantitative 
offect of any one. What has been said in the preceding paragraphs 
can serve in no way as verification of theory. It is merely a resort 
to general reasoning, deduction, theory, as a means of interpreting 
a complicated and perplexing course of events. The theory may 
help in explaining the facts; but the facts are not such as to 
substantiate any theory.