The reasoning of the preceding paragraphs bears also on the second part of the bimetallist indictment--that, namely, as to the depressing effects of falling prices on industrial enterprise. Whether a simple rise in the value of money, unaccompanied by any other circumstance, would have the depressing effects which the bimetallists predict and the classic economists deny, is a question radically different from that which in fact presents itself. It may be that in this simple case the bimetallists might prove to be, in some degree at least, in the right, and that the classic reasoning, here as on many other subjects, while sound in the long run, would need some qualifications and correction. In the long run, no doubt, it is immaterial whether prices are high or low, whether money returns fall or rise; and yet it might turn out that the habitual association of gain or loss with "making money" would cause a period of simple falling prices to be one of hesitating investment of capital and unenterprising conduct of business. But what the world in fact has seen has been the complex case of a fall in prices accompanied by great improvements in production. The business man and capitalist has had, to be sure, to deal with falling prices; but the same amount of capital and labor has turned out more commodities than before; and his total money returns, so far from declining, have generally increased. The money incomes of the managers of industry have shown the same upward movement as the money incomes of the other classes in society. So long as this is the case, it is idle to talk of a depressing effect on enterprise from the fall in prices, or of a strangling of the industrial organism from insufficiency of the circulating medium. In fact, the immediate cause of the fall in prices has been the pushing on the market for sale of larger and larger quantities of commodities, produced with profit at lower and lower cost: a state of things fortunate for the community, and surely not depressing for the business man.... This effect on the entrepreneur of improvements and of falling prices combined, doubtless accounts for the failure of the bimetallist agitation to secure any appreciable hold in the business world. The bimetallists, both in England and on the Continent, have labored zealously to engage support among the business men, but never with a degree of success at all proportionate to the energy displayed. The simple reason is that the business world has not been in any state of chronic depression. In the ups and downs of industrial activity there have been periods which seemed to confirm the pessimistic accounts of the bimetallist and of other persons malcontent with the present order of things; but in due time the tide has always turned....