38 
MONEY 
when first established, might have been paid for some 
years without any addition to taxation or debt, by 
giving the pensioners a one-pound note every four 
weeks, if no reserve had been kept against the notes : 
would the pensioner’s genuine demand for the notes 
have justified the statement that the issue was 
automatic and the Government had no control over 
its amount? If an extra hundred millions war- 
bonus (or peace-bonus for all the difference it makes) 
were paid by additions to the £1 and 10s. currency 
notes of £2,000,000 a week, would there not be 
a genuine demand for these additional notes? If 
the Government hires schoolgirls at fz a week to 
watch a simple machine and defrays the expense by 
giving each of them two new £1 currency notes which 
are clear additions to the amount already outstanding, 
can it be said that these girls do not exercise a genuine 
demand for the notes ? 
Every monopolist producer controls his sales, and 
the Government manufacturer of notes is no excep- 
tion. The monopolist of an ordinary commodity 
can limit his sales in one of two different ways, first, 
by offering a fixed amount of the product for sale by 
auction, and so letting the consumers determine the 
price, and secondly, by offering .to sell any amount 
that may be inquired for at a price fixed by himself. 
The second is the usual method : it limits the total 
sold in the long run just as effectually as the other. 
If 100,000 bottles of some patent medicine can be 
sold at 3s. each, while 110,000 could scarcely be sold 
at 2s. 6d. and only 70,000 could be sold at 3s. 6d., it 
is all the same whether the monopolist says he will 
sell 100,000 bottles a year for what they will fetch, 
or says the price is 3s. and any one who likes can have 
a bottle at that rate. Just so with notes. The 
monopolist producers of notes control the issue either 
by saying they will issue such and such an amount,