72 
MONEY 
to *occupy” or use farms and houses, both new 
and old. Under Supply we found that currency 
belonged to the class of things of which the supply 
can conveniently be taken to be the quantity in 
existence, and now, under Demand, we may think of 
currency as being demanded by people who want to 
hold it rather than to consume it. 
This idea of the demand for currency coming from 
the holders runs through the whole of the First Part 
of the present book, and is most important to the 
argument put forward there. But it appears very 
strange to all who have been brought up to believe 
that the demand for currency is furnished by the 
number and amount of the transactions effected. 
That belief seems to me to be exactly equal to a 
belief that the demand for houses comes not from 
the people who want to live in houses, but from 
people who buy houses and sell them again forthwith. 
The effective demand for houses evidently comes 
from those who want to hold houses: even the 
speculator wants to hold for a time. Mere activity 
in the house market ”’—a little more changing 
ownership than usual—only involves an increase of 
demand in the same sense as it involves an equal 
increase of supply which cancels it. Whatever may 
be said about the actual use of the terms, it is clear 
that the demand which is important as affecting the 
value of the houses is the demand for occupation. 
Similarly, more transactions for money—more pur- 
chases and sales of commodities and services—may in 
a sense be said to involve increase of demand for 
money, but in the corresponding sense it may be 
said to involve an equal increase of supply of money ; 
the two things cancel. The demand which is 
important for our purpose is the demand for currency, 
not to pay away again immediately, but to old. 
Just as you are a less important demander of houses