It was Carranza who started the paper money orgy. In the course of three years he issued probably 2,000,000,000 pesos of paper currency--the exact records, if kept, have never been made public. Through this means he destroyed the confidence of the public in paper money, and ultimately, when he came to full power, wiped out of existence the whole system of Banks of Issue established by Diaz. The first of the Carranza paper money was issued in Chihuahua, and was accepted at its face value. Diaz had taught the people, down to the humblest peon, to accept paper money, and the bayonets of the Carranza troops convinced any who doubted the quality of the new issue. It was a good scheme for financing a revolution--till Villa drove Carranza out of Chihuahua and declared Carranza money worthless and its possession a political crime. Now Villa money was issued, and was forced upon the people at the points of new bayonets, and as the various chieftains chased each other over the country the money of the towns fluctuated with the identity of the conqueror. Metallic currency disappeared completely and the value of paper money fell by jolts to a few centavos on the peso. These were the days when men who were paid in American money lived like kings. House rent was fifty cents a month; light, gas and water cost a dime. You could travel hundreds of miles in a Pullman for a dollar, and settle all your old debts for two per cent of the original figure. Food prices went up, of course, and the natives, mostly paid in the depreciated paper, suffered terribly. Starvation followed in waves, and the mortality in the cities was appalling. The value of paper money fluctuated over night, and after closing hours each day, there was a scampering of merchants to sell the currency taken in during the day. They bought New York drafts, worn American bills, diamonds, carriages and real estate, at prices whose rise could not possibly keep up with the fall in the value of paper money. Early in the excitement Carranza had begun to repudiate his various issues of currency. The reason given was a real one--that they were being counterfeited everywhere, a process simple enough, for the original issues were themselves crudely printed on ordinary paper. At first the Carrancistas had attempted to keep up with the avalanche of counterfeits by requiring that all paper money on hand in banks, stores and private tills be submitted regularly for inspection. Not even the government “experts” could tell the bad from the good, however, and they ended by declaring all of the money submitted by their political friends to be all right, and confiscating, as counterfeit, a large and fixed percentage of that owned by men of doubtful “loyalty.” The process did not tend to increase the public confidence in the administration.