VALUE OF GOLD 
17 
less goods of some sort or other. If I give £5 for 
the gold in a dental plate and a gold watch and chain, 
Just in the same way I must give up some commodities 
or services for the £5, so that I am really exchanging 
these for the plate and watch and chain.! So even 
more obviously of any large aggregate of persons. 
If the people of India individually or the Government 
of India decide that thev will keen a larger stock of 
gold or silver, they must oht-iy wy giving goods or 
services in exchange for <* -~- have been doing 
for centuries. 
If this is not found sufficiently convincing let us 
think of the converse case, in which a person sells his 
gold ornaments or reduces his stock of coin. Does 
he not then increase the demand for commodities 
other than gold as compared with the demand for 
gold ? During a coal shortage I sold some gold orna- 
ments, and immediately expended the money pro- 
ceeds in the purchase of wood for fuel. Must not 
this have tended to make the demand for gold less 
and the demand for wood greater than if I had 
continued to keep the ornaments in a drawer and 
gone without a fire? So, too, if I had arranged by 
good management to reduce my stock of coin by 
£1, could I not have spent that £1 on something that 
I wanted, and would nc his have tended to diminish 
the value of gold and increase the demand for the 
thing that I bought and therefore for things other 
than gold? To buy gold with gold would be as 
futile as to buy wheat with wheat ; whenever we get 
gold by giving something else for it we tend to increase 
the demand for it, and consem=rily to increase its 
value: whenever we give - * =; something else 
* I have thought it best not to encumber the text with the 
suggestion that I may get the coin simply by reducing my 
balance at the bank. "If I do this it means simply that I drive 
a harder bargain with the bank and the banker instead of me 
has to sacrifice somethino