Nor is it surprising that business men failed to see what was coming; for the course of prices depended chiefly upon the valuation set upon the greenbacks, and this valuation, in turn, depended chiefly upon the state of the finances and the fortunes of war--matters that no one could foresee with certainty. Indeed, there was much of the time a very general disposition to take an unwarrantedly optimistic view of the military situation and the chances of an early peace. Many members of the business community seem to have felt that the premium on gold was artificial and must soon drop, that prices were inflated and must collapse. To the extent that such views prevailed borrowers would be cautious about making engagements to repay money in a future that might well present a lower range of prices, and lenders would expect a gain instead of a loss from the changes in the purchasing power of money. But the full explanation of the slight advance in interest cannot be found in this inability to foresee the future--at least not without further analysis of what consequences such inability entailed. Workingmen are commonly credited with less foresight than capitalists, and nevertheless they seem, according to the figures, to have succeeded better in making bargains with employers of labour than did lenders with employers of capital. The explanation of this less success seems to be found in the difference between the way in which depreciation affected what the capitalist and the laborer had to offer in return for interest and wages. There is no reason for assuming that an artisan who changed employers during the war would render less efficient service in his new than in his old position, or that a landlord who changed tenants had less advantages to put at the disposal of the incoming lessee. In both these cases the good offered to the active business man remained substantially the same, and it may safely be assumed that, other things being equal, this business man could afford to give quite as much for the labor and the land after as before suspension. From the business man's point of view, therefore, there seems to have been room for a doubling of money wages and rent when the purchasing power of money had fallen one-half. But in the case of the borrower of capital the like was not true. The thousand dollars which Mr. A offered him in 1865 was not, like the labour of John Smith or the farm of Mr. B, as efficient for his purposes as it would have been five years before. For, with the thousand dollars he could not purchase anything like the same amount of machinery, material, or labor. And since the same nominal amount of capital was of less efficiency in the hands of the borrower, he could not without loss to himself increase the interest which he paid for new loans in proportion to the decline in the purchasing power of money, as he could increase the wages of laborers or the rent for land.