increase agricultural credit facilities will fail! We are driven to one of the most fundamental contrasts in economic theory, which appears under various guises and in different forms: statics _vs._ dynamics; transition _vs._ equilibrium, theory of prosperity _vs._ theory of goods; normal tendency _vs._ "friction."[296] Perhaps Professor Fisher, and the quantity theorist in general, would dismiss many of these considerations as not applicable to the general principle, which is a "normal" or "static" or "long run" law, not subject to considerations of this sort. It is scarcely open to Fisher to defend himself this way, because of his exceedingly uncompromising statement regarding even "transitional" relations between volume of trade and money and credit. I shall not reply to anyone who offers such an objection by a general tirade against "static economics." I believe thoroughly in the method of economic abstraction, and in reaching general principles by ignoring, provisionally, in thought the "friction" and "disturbing tendencies" which often make the first approximations look somewhat unreal. But I raise this question: to what feature of our economic order do we chiefly owe it that we can make such abstractions? By virtue of what does friction disappear? What is it that makes our abstract picture of economic life, as a fluid equilibrium, with its nice marginal adjustments, its timeless logical relations, correspond as closely as it does to reality? The answer is: MONEY and CREDIT.[297] It is the _business_, the _function_, of money and credit, as instruments of exchange, to bring about the fluid market, to overcome friction, to effect rapid readjustments, to give verisimilitude to the static theory, to make the assumptions of the static theory come true. Where exchange is easy and friction slight, there will not be two prices for the same good in the same market. Speculators, seeking profits of fractions of a point, will prevent that. By multiplying exchanges, they will level off values and prices. Because money and credit have done their work so thoroughly in the "great market," it is possible for men to talk about static theory, and to work out economic laws in abstraction from friction, transitions, and the like.