As a medium of exchange the volume or quantity of money in circulation should be sufficiently large to accomplish the transaction of business without waste or delay. In estimating the necessary volume it is proper to take into consideration the numbers of population, the magnitude of business transacted, and, since a nimble dollar will perform the work of several slow ones, the “effectiveness” or rapidity with which money circulates; and, since population and business are, upon the whole, constantly increasing, and the rapidity of circulation (until some swifter method of locomotion be discovered) remains unaltered, the volume of money, clearly, ought to be increased from year to year. Few who have not patiently studied the problems of finance understand the mighty effects of an expansion or contraction of the money volume upon, not only the material, but the moral well-being of mankind. The very heart of the complex money question, the center of all its divergent issues, is the question of The Volume of Money. The volume or quantity of money in circulation is always hard to determine, principally because banks, brokers and their allies in official and journalistic positions are generally interested in concealing or misstating the facts on purpose to mislead the public; so that, not infrequently, a period of financial disaster steals upon the people unaware and they are compelled to endure all the miseries of such an event without being able to detect the cause or apply the remedy. In such circumstances the masses may dimly perceive that they are being robbed, yet, unable to detect the means of their spoliation, they attribute it to every cause but the real one, and thus the spoliators are enabled to repeat their robbery again and again, undetected by any save a few whose complaints are regarded as the extravagances of uninformed or fanatic minds. To fully comprehend how the exploiters of money may enrich themselves and impoverish others by merely manipulating the currency, it is necessary to understand the primary fact that _an increasing volume of money brings rising prices and business activity, while a diminishing volume of money causes falling prices and business stagnation_. Upon this proposition the following authorities are cited: David Hume, the English historian, in his essay on “Money,” says: