MEASUREMENT OF VALUE 
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a pound sterling, £1, will buy less than before : 
when the same words are used in the United States 
what is meant is that a dollar, $1, will buy less ; 
when in France, that a franc, 1f., and in India, that 
a rupee, R1, will buy less. Thus an alteration in the 
general level of prices is the same thing as an alter- 
ation in the value of money, except of course that it 
is upsidedown, a fall in the value of money being a 
rise in the general level of prices, and a rise in its 
value being a fall in that level. As prices are expressed 
in quantities of the unit of account, this is a matter 
which could not possibly be otherwise. The price of 
things is the money got for them ; the value ° money 
is the things got for it. 
Till recently there have been many persons, and 
perhaps there still are some, who mani:est an extra- 
ordinary reluctance to admit the occurrence of any 
change in the general level of prices in their own time. 
They appear to have at the back of their minds an 
impression that money has become invariable in 
value, so that prices taken as a whole are no longer 
subject to change, however much variation there may 
be in the prices of particular commodities. Why such 
changes should have been possible in the past, as 
they admit, and not in the present, they are never 
able to explain, and their reluctance to admit the 
possibility of changes in the present is only the 
consequence of their being so habitually accustomed 
to measure values by money that they feel towards 
any suggestion that the value of money itself wants 
measuring just as the aged villager feels towards the 
suggestion that the distance between two milestones 
from which 4 "2s ““rcughout life taken his idea of 
a mile is £ mand “he suggestion that 
the ve’ . =38uaan;,  -oears as incred- 
ible . le suggestion t.... .e whole of the 
WwW orkshire had risen « fco’ between