XIII. ELASTICITY OR INELASTICITY? 117 XIV. EXHAUSTIBILITY 128 XV. THE THEORETIC LINE OF SAFETY 139 XVI. SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA 149 XVII. EQUITABLE RESPONSIBILITY 156 XVIII. CORRELATION 166 XIX. THE SUPPLEMENTARY INFLOW 172 XX. CREDIT AND CIVILIZATION 184 XXI. CONFIDENCE AND GREATNESS 193 XXII. FROZEN WEALTH 202 XXIII. SOME CONCLUSIONS 211 APPENDICES 221 THE WAR AND OUR FINANCIAL FABRIC CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY Treatises innumerable have been written about money. Famous and non-famous political economists have attempted a definition of money. These definitions have been divergent, and often irreconcilable. Political economists have found it no easier to arrive at a simple, understandable, explicit formula than literary critics have found it to define poetry. All of us have a vague idea of what money is, but it is so vague that it is well-nigh impossible to present it in a concise and precise phrase. This amazes the man in the street, who believes that nothing is so simple, nothing so easily conceivable as money. To him, of course, money consists of so many pounds, shillings, and pence, and when that is said, all is said. What more is there to explain and define? He is wealthy or poor, comfortable or miserable, according to the quantity of pounds, shillings, and pence he possesses. He knows that he can satisfy his needs, his desires, his cravings if he has enough money with which to buy what he wants, but if he has insufficient his needs and longings will not be gratified. He knows that when he goes into a shop he exchanges money for commodities. When he purchases a pair of boots he does not tender for them a watch, or loaves, or a couple of tender chickens that he has bred on his poultry farm. He hands over a few shillings, receives the boots neatly packed, thanks the shopman, says “Good-day,” and is quite unconscious that he really has exchanged for the boots commodities that he or some other members of the community have produced.