The people on the island clothed themselves largely in cloth made in foreign countries; and as the island currency was non-exportable, the cloth was paid for by exporting gold, or commodities which could readily be exchanged in other countries for gold. The cloth thus purchased with gold was made up into clothing by the "ready-made" clothing dealers in the cities, and sold in this form for currency, to smaller or retail dealers on a credit of from three to six or nine months. Had the currency involved in this transaction throughout been gold, or certificates representing deposits of gold, the credit price of the ready-made clothing would have been the cash price, with a small amount additional to represent interest on the credit-time, and a possible risk of non-payment; and the seller would never for one moment have taken into consideration the question whether the currency, or representation of money in which he was to be paid, three, six, or nine months afterward, would have the same value or purchasing power that it had on the day the debt was contracted. He might have doubted whether his customer would pay him at all, but he never would as to the quality of that which he was entitled to receive as payment. But as the currency involved in so much of the transaction as occurred after the cloth was made into clothing was neither gold nor any thing which represented gold, nor any other valuable commodity, and therefore, like a ship without a rudder, or a locomotive without a track, was sure to be unreliable as an exchanging instrumentality, the seller knew to a certainty that what he was to receive in payment of his goods, three, six, or nine months afterward, would not have the same value or purchasing power that it had on the day the debt was contracted. It might be greater, it might be less; but the seller never bet on the former contingency, or allowed for it by deducting any thing from the time price of his goods, for to do so would be to discard in anticipation a possible incidental profit. But he always, as a matter of safety, felt obliged to bet on the latter contingency, and then cover the bet by adding correspondingly to the price of every thing he sold on credit. When, by reason of the disturbed condition of things, the purchasing power of the currency fluctuated greatly in brief intervals, the seller on all his time sales bet in favor of great risks, and bet differently every day, and added ten, fifteen, twenty, or even thirty per cent. to his prices over and above the general aggregate representing cost, profit, interest, and ordinary risk, in order to make sure of receiving currency of sufficient purchasing value to enable him to buy back as much gold as he was obliged to give for the cloth originally.