CHAPTER 30
SOME EXPERIENCES UNDER PAPER MONEY
I AM unable to attempt anything in the way of extended test or
substantiation of the lines of reasoning followed in the preceding
chapters. Voluminous as is the literature on paper money and on
international trade under paper money, little investigation has
been made that would bear directly on this sort of analysis. The
absence of inductive studies that might serve to. confirm it or refute
it is due partly to the changing and unstable character of the events
themselves — paper currency issues commonl, are § .bject to
arbitrary and irregular fluctuations — but also to d . lack of
adequate statistical data. In the main I must ask the reader to
take the theorems here laid down as theorems only, as abstract
doctrines or preliminary approximations, subject to correction,
possibly rejection, as further and more searching inquiry is made on
the actual course of events.
Two episodes, however, may be considered for the light which
they throw on the validity of this theoretic procedure. Both are
paper money episodes; one in the United States, the other in
Argentina. Both are comparatively recent, having taken place in
the latter part of the 19th century. Both have been the subject
of painstaking inquiry.!
The experience of the United States from the close of the Civil
War in 1865 to the resumption of specie payments in 1879 is instruc-
! The evidence set forth in the following pages is derived entirely from Professor
F. D. Graham's paper on International Trade under Depreciated Paper; The
United States 1862-1879, published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
February, 1922; and from Professor J. H. Williams's book on Argentine Inter-
national Trade under Inconvertible Paper Money 1880-1900, published in the
Harvard Economic Studies, 1920. Everything that I am able to adduce on the
two episodes is taken from these admirable studies. My own interpretation of
the results is not always quite the same as that of the authors; but I am indebted
to them for everything that may be of value, and am glad to acknowledge my
nhbligation.
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