172 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

In the former case, as already stated, the change cannot
be maintained unless increased means for carrying on the
operations inevitably bound up with it are available, and as
a rule that means that more money must be forthcoming, or
the advance must be checked or annulled. But the improvement
 of the credit organisation may provide the necessary
increase of money. It is in the nature of improvements of
this class to enable a larger credit structure to be built on
a narrower cash basis. Thus it amounts to a provision of
money for other purposes from what was formerly needed to
support credit. The means for upholding some part of the
increase in prices may thus be forthcoming. But if an
Improved organisation of credit be not the cause, a permanent
increase of credit facilities can only be secured on an enlargement
 of the cash basis of the credit structure. Thus, though
rst noted in the field of credit, the change in question may
Se traced to a money change.
The only case in which we can admit a change, in the
relation of prices to money-supply, differing in kind from
that which would be produced in a purely money economy,
is that of a change in credit organisation, which, as pointed
out, means a setting free of part of the former money-supply,
50 that its effects are quite similar to those of an increase of
money-supply. These considerations do not negative the
interdependence of money-supply and general price-level.
They do require that the interdependence should not be
expressed as one involving equal proportionate changes in
these two items,
Over short periods, as between different seasons of the
same year, changes in the volume of transactions are able to
be handled by means of changes in the proportion which
cash transactions are of all exchanges, or by changes in the
credit facilities accorded on a given cash reserve. But even
here price-change is not entirely avoided. After harvest,
when the volume of exchanges is exceptionally large, prices
fall in spite of extension of credits beyond the normal
amount.
A phenomenon which appears greatly at variance with
the doctrine here maintained is the rise in prices, accom-