"good will."[292] Of course, not all good will is got at a cost. Much of it is adventitious. In the light of the doctrine that trade is independent of money and credit, one wonders why it should be thought necessary to extend branches of American banks to the South American markets which we are now reaching out toward. And why have Americans, from the beginning, been constantly increasing commercial banks?[293] It is easy to sneer at the efforts of the successive frontiers in our history to provide themselves with banks of issue as based on a delusion, the delusion that bank-notes are "capital," and to say that their real need was, not more bank-credit, but more real capital. They needed more tools and live-stock, doubtless, but is that the whole story? And were their banks of no assistance in getting the additional capital of various sorts? And was it a matter of no consequence that they had an abundant medium of exchange? It seems almost childish to put such questions, but the quantity theory has as its logical corollary that to multiply banks is quite useless and wasteful, since the only result is to raise prices. If increasing bank-credit cannot increase trade or production, this corollary is inevitable. Indeed, the case may be more strongly stated. Quite apart from the wasted labor of bank-clerks and the waste of banking capital, the effect of increasing bank-development, on quantity theory reasoning, is harmful. If increasing bank-credit is to raise prices without increasing trade, then, on quantity theory reasoning, it must _depress_ business. The reason is that rising prices in a given region make that region a bad place to buy in, and so curtail its exports. This is, indeed, the quantity theory explanation of international trade, to which attention is later to be given. The country which is expanding its banking facilities most rapidly will suffer most in competition in the world markets. This is why the United States have so little foreign trade! It also explains the rapid strides that China and Central Africa have recently made in capturing the world's markets. I submit that there is no flaw in this argument, if the premise of the independence of volume of trade and volume of bank-credit be granted. It follows from the quantity theory. That it is no caricature of Fisher's argument will appear, I think, from the following quotation,[294] which very nearly states what I have just been saying, though it does not draw the conclusion that banking is a bad thing: "The invention of banking has made deposit currency possible, and its adoption has undoubtedly led to a great increase in deposits and consequent rise in prices. Even in the last decade the extension in the United States of deposit banking has been an exceedingly powerful influence in that direction. In Europe deposit banking is in its infancy."[295] Happy Europe, troubled only by war! It is greatly to be hoped, in the interests of American agriculture, that the efforts to