To show that increasing trade tends to increase money and credit is not difficult. If one may venture a hypothetical illustration--and the sort of hypothetical illustrations, like the dodo-bone case, of which quantity theorists are fond make one hesitate to do so--let us assume a communistic community, isolated from other markets, with a developed system of production, including an extensive use of gold in the arts. Let the communistic regime gradually pass over to an individualistic regime. Assume that the inhabitants are acquainted with the use of gold as money, and that their government is willing to coin it freely. As individualism spreads, and trade grows, will not more and more gold be taken to the mints? I am not here concerned with the principles determining the apportionment of gold between the money employment and the arts. It is enough to show that expanding trade tends to increase the volume of money. Assume that the money supply meets difficulties in its expansion. Is there not at once an incentive to extend credit? The seller finds his customers unwilling to buy for cash, in amounts as great as before. In order to sell as much as before (assuming that the use of credit is known, to avoid trouble with historical origins), he extends credit,--which, when practiced generally, lightens the strain on the money supply. I have so far said nothing of the case where there are stocks of the money metal to be got from outside markets. But if a country is expanding its trade, does not money come in? The quantity theorists would, indeed, admit this, in general, though their reason is a bad one, namely: that expanding trade lowers prices, and lower prices make the market attractive to foreign buyers, who then send in money for the goods. I shall later discuss this aspect of the theory.[314] For the present, I merely interject the question as to the probability of an expansion of trade when prices are falling. Increasing _stocks_ of particular goods may well mean lower prices for these goods and if they be articles of export the lower prices may well increase the export trade, and bring money in. But this increase in _stocks_ of articles of _export_ is very different from total _trade_ within the country; and lower prices in articles of export are very different from a generally lower price-level.[315]