3 
MONEY 
makes the value of money change has become the 
duty of all who think themselves capable of expressing 
useful opinions on economic affairs. The following 
pages embody an attempt to assist in this task. They 
do not profess to be exhaustive : investigation of the 
past and discussion of schemes for the future have 
both been sacrificed in order that space might be 
zained for treatment of the present. 
S$ 2. Recognition and measurement of changes in the 
value of money. 
A great many attempts have been made to define 
money in few words. They have failed like similar 
attempts to define other economic terms commonly 
used in ordinary language. They fail because money, 
like most of the other great economic terms, and like 
nearly all words in common use, means different 
things in different contexts. In a context like 
the present, which suggests an investigation into 
the causes of rising and falling prices, it means the 
unit of account commonly used in purchases and 
sales and other commercial transactions. In the 
United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa, 
people buy goods with and sell them for pounds, 
shillings and pence, and “ prices” are always ex- 
pressed in quantities of these units: in the United 
States and Canada dollars and cents are used for the 
purpose : in France, francs and centimes : in India 
rupees, annas and pice. But as the cent and centime 
are merely decimal fractions of the dollar and franc, 
and the shilling and penny merely vulgar fractions 
of the pound, and annas and pice the same of the 
rupee, we can say for short and without any risk of 
being misunderstood, that the unit of account in 
these countries is the pound, the dollar, the franc, and 
the rupee. When, then, it is said in England that 
the value of money has fallen, what is meant is that