Nor is the tremendous agitation over bimetallism, involving a literature so great that no man could dream of reading it all, involving great political movements, Presidential campaigns, great Congressional debates, repeated legislation, international conferences, etc., for twenty years, to be explained on any other ground than that the world felt practical, important, and unpleasant effects on industry and trade from the inadequacy of the money supply. The view of Hartley Withers[236] is interesting here. He says: "any such great addition to currency and credit would have a great effect in stimulating production, and so would lead to a great addition to the number of real goods which humanity desires and consumes when it can get them.... Trade would be more active." On p. 23 he speaks of the enormous expansion of trade made possible by paper representatives of gold. On p. 83 he speaks of the attitude of the money-market toward gold, which the orthodox economist is apt to think of as a survival of Mercantilism. Withers thinks that the money market is right in a large degree. As illustrating Withers' statement about the views of "practical men" on this point, the following extract from a recent address by Theodore Price, quoted with approval in a "market letter," written by Byron W. Holt,[237] is interesting: "The fact seems to be that the exigencies of war in Europe are leading to an extension of credit such as would not have been possible in peace, because the hesitant conservatism of bankers would have then prevented it, and we are finding that instead of working harm it is doing good, because huge masses of fixed capital are thereby made productive, and are circulating with the increased velocity that always quickens enterprise and accelerates the wheels of industry.... All the precedents of history indicate that accelerated activity will come with peace and continue until the exuberance of success has led men to build faster than the world has grown and to demand credit upon the basis of future rather than of present values."