194 The Stock Market Crash—And After
the basis of the money and credit structures throughout
 the world.
With the yearly increase in gold production
lagging further and further behind the monetary demand
 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 depression—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 removal
 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 interference
 being the deflation of 1920-1921, still well
remembered—that the relief afforded by their removal
 must be regarded as of quite enormous importance.
 This negative cause, together with the five
more positive causes, constitute an adequate explanation
 for the amazing increase in productivity per