The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1899-02-10
Price Movement.

Hon. Wharton Barker in dissertation
on price movements says
"And further be it remembered that as
the possession of credit on the books of
bank will give to a man purchasing
power equal as currency to an equal
amount in hand, it follows that an ex-
pansion of bank credits will tend to raise
prices as surely as an expansion of
currency"
This position of Mr. Barker is clearly
untenable. The consumer cannot use
! bank credit to pay for goods that go into
personal use, and all commodities, sooner
or later go into personal use. When goods
reach the consumer they stop. The con-
sumer cannot shift them to another party
and look to him for payment. The con-
sumer must pay the bill of every agent
through whose hands the goods have
passed. The manufacturer, or producer
may pay for his raw materials by the use
of bank credit or borrowed money.
He passes them 10 the wholesaler or job
Der and looks to him for payment. The
iobber pays with bank credit or borrowed
money and passes the product to the re-
taller, who i'll like manner may settle his
bill with the jobber and collect the
amount with all the expenses and COM
missions which Have been tackled on in its
course from producer to consumer.
The consumer must pay i'll cash. He
has no one to shift the bill onto The
consumer is the end of the lcircuit
and he must pay from his proper
ton of the currency in circulation. 1t
matters not how great the expansion of
business may have been by the use of
bank credit, the price is determined by
the ability of the consumer TO pay cash.
Bank credit may stimulate production
and increase the quantity of goods to be
exchanged for money, and such condi-
ton will tend to lower prices but never to
raise them without loss to some of the
intermediary agents in getting the goods
to the consumer The cash in the hand
of the consumer must pay for all, that
consumer representing the entire body OF
the population, cannot have any more
money than the currency in circulation.
The volume of circulating medium fixes
the price in spite of all the bank credits,
checks and devices with which business
is transacted This is ar economic truth,
stable as the rock of Gibraltar A small
quantity of circulating money and a large
quantity of things to be exchanged for it
means low prices, and there is no getting
away from this both theoretical and prac-
teal truth.
There is wearisome repetition by the
metropolitan daily newspapers of a great
business and prosperity boom now in
progress, which they claim is sweeping
the whole country, which like the dews
of heaven or the rain and sunshine falls
alike on rich and poor This is very
largely assumption. The banking and
money trust, the industrial trust, the
Chamber of Commerce and Boards of
Trade, spectators and gamblers in
stocks, etc, are gathering in the vast
volume of wealth the hard working in
dustrial class created, and which the
buncoing scheme of low prices has strip
ped the producing class Of all but small
fraction, enough merely to sustain them
in working condition. That is the loca-
ton of our prosperity boom and those are
the enjoyers of the Intoxicating prosper
ity the newspapers are calling on the
whole world to behold and admire It is
not the producers of this fabulous wealth
who are enjoying it, but a compai atively
small class of the population. Those who
do not create but absorb