194 The Stock Market Crash—And After 
the basis of the money and credit structures through- 
out the world. 
With the yearly increase in gold production 
lagging further and further behind the monetary de- 
mand from increased business, we may expect the 
very elements of our prosperity making for business 
expansion to accentuate this possible gold crisis in 
the years to come with consequent business de- 
pression—unless measures which are quite practicable 
shall be taken to prevent it. 
But whatever the future may have in store, certain 
it is that we have had seven wonderful years of 
stable money. 
Relief Due to Stable Money 
Unlike the other five causes of increased national 
productivity enumerated in preceding chapters, 
namely, mergers, scientific research and invention, 
management engineering, labor’s new policy, and 
prohibition, the influence of stable money has been 
purely negative, consisting as it has in the mere re- 
moval of the twin interferences of inflation and 
deflation. 
But these interferences, until the last few years, 
have been so incessant and so ruinous—the last inter- 
ference being the deflation of 1920-1921, still well 
remembered—that the relief afforded by their re- 
moval must be regarded as of quite enormous im- 
portance. This negative cause, together with the five 
more positive causes, constitute an adequate explana- 
tion for the amazing increase in productivity per