112 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
And other countries discovered that they could, with advantage, join in 
the game of ‘ beggar-my-neighbour,’ which France had been quietly 
playing for several years and we had begun to play in boisterous fashion. 
Then followed the new practice of ‘ competitive depreciation ’ with the 
aid of instruments euphemistically called ‘ exchange stabilisation’ or 
‘exchange equalisation’ funds. Before this new practice spread we 
were enjoying our new freedom. Gold was a ‘ fair weather standard,’ 
to which we were in no hurry to return. America wanted us to return 
to gold, but why should we rush into new danger? Disillusioriment 
came when the United States (and therefore Canada) joined in the new 
game. ‘The most recent experience, with new and strong players, has 
led us to believe that, after all, the game is not worth the candie, and 
that what we had termed a strait jacket was merely that sort of discipline 
which is a condition of freedom. The gold standard promises once more 
to become popular. 
II. 
The brief survey that I have submitted suggests the need for a restate- 
ment of monetary theory. In spite of all that has been published in 
recent years I do not believe that the monetary standard has yet received 
adequate treatment ds a separate problem. In most cases the discussion 
of the standard has been more or less incidental to the discussion of other 
problems that either appear more urgent or are regarded as the central 
theme of the writer. Naturally I do not propose, in this paper, to attempt 
to fill the gap. But I venture to attempt to place before you those issues 
which, in my opinion, can be appreciated by the general public and must 
be faced if we wish to restore and afterwards maintain the gold standard 
in this and other countries. Moreover, I shall submit reasons for my 
belief that we should again seek to establish that standard, and that some 
modifications recently suggested would tend to weaken rather than enhance 
its value as an instrument of social progress. 
Money is the means by which we secure ownership of things that we 
desire, or obtain services of various kinds. The amount of money paid 
for goods and services is the result of bargaining between buyers and 
sellers, and this result is influenced by certain fundamental considerations. 
One of these is the connection or sympathy that normally exists between 
the rates of payment (which I shall call wages) prevailing for personal 
services. Ifa coal miner earned ten times as much as a railway worker 
everybody would know that there was some highly abnormal influence 
at work which would ultimately disappear. Relative wages are governed 
by silent and persistent forces known to every student of elementary 
economics. ‘They tend to arrange themselves around a mean wage in 
the manner determined by such forces. In a world of change the dis- 
persion of actual wage rates at any time is never precisely that which the 
persistent forces tend to produce ; nevertheless the correcting influences 
are always at work. Again, the ‘ short period,’ during which deviations 
from the ‘ normal ’ distribution about the mean level may continue, tends 
to grow longer. ‘The mills of competition grind slowly. But they con- 
