The situation of the country during the war in regard to business was put plainly by Mr. Snyder in the following words: "Railroads cannot haul any more goods. The government is already stepping in to shut down on shipments on certain lines of industry. We can not get any more coal unless labor is drafted from other industries, and as a whole we cannot get any more labor as is evident from the fantastic wages that are now being paid. In a word, production and therefore the actual volume of exchange is practically at the limit and has been for a year or more. No expansion of bank credits can put this production any higher. It follows, therefore, as a practical fact that _any expansion of bank loans now means inflation_--to all practical intents dollar for dollar." Because of the introduction of a billion dollars worth of gold into the country, prices have risen nearly one hundred percent. The expansion of bank credits increases the cost of living and the cost of the war will be doubled. Some bankers estimated that if the war lasted the expansion of bank loans might reach $50,000,000,000. The progress of these loans was encouraged by the cutting of the required metallic reserve under the new Federal Reserve system and the system of book credits with the Federal Reserve banks allowed to the banks that are members of the system. The following is Mr. Snyder's description of the way the inflation was encouraged. "Every dollar of gold may become three dollars of Federal Bank credits and each dollar of this may in turn become the basis of eight dollars of credits for the Central Reserve cities, ten dollars for the smaller cities and fifteen dollars for the country banks, which works out to a practical average of ten dollars for all the banks in the Federal Reserve system."