THE STANDARD OF VALUE 271 
To illustrate: In the first six months of 1919 the dollar in the 
United States was worth on an average only forty-three per cent 
as much as during the ten-year period, at the beginning of this 
century, 1900 to 1909. This statement applies to the gold 
dollar, its value being measured by the amount of the multipli- 
city of things (in proportion to their consumption by the nation) 
which it will buy. This great fall in value was due to the new 
economic conditions resulting from the war, such as inflation of 
currency, war debts and high taxation. The bond holder had 
sacrificed at that time, if measured in the desirable things which 
money will buy, more than one-half of that portion of his wealth 
which he held in long-time credits. But he was not the only 
loser. The salaried class had likewise been hard hit during the 
same period. Salaries, more particularly those of men and 
women in the public service of school teachers, of post office 
employees, of firemen, of policemen and public officials and also 
those of clerks, and of the whole class of salaried professional 
men — not to forget the clergy — had remained comparatively 
stationary. It is this salaried class, dependent as they ordi- 
narily are upon their immediate earnings to meet their family 
requirements, which had to stint itself. Here was found a real 
sacrifice with a resultant reduction in the standard of living, 
temporary to be sure, which was almost universally accepted as 
a necessary sacrifice for the welfare of the country. 
The owners of real estate and the wage earners were among 
those who were least affected in the years during and immediately 
following the war by the decline of the purchasing power of the 
dollar. The real estate owner found that property values — 
measured by the dollar — had gone up, though not perhaps in 
the same proportion as the value of the dollar had gone down. 
The wage earner, well organized, kept close watch of the increase 
of cost of food and other necessities and made demands from time 
to time for increase of compensation, which to the extent of their 
reasonableness, gauged by the increased cost of living, he was 
bound to secure in the long run. He was, moreover, not back- 
ward in asking for all that circumstances would allow. Statis-