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Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
economical principle is better established than that a general and 
permanent rise in prices benefits no one. If the price of commod¬ 
ities rises equally, no one is better paid for his goods or labor than 
before, and only by a prolongation of the rise indefinitely would 
even the seeming of money-making be kept up. The farmer and 
artisan would receive more and more of the crisp, fascinating green¬ 
backs, but would find their purchasing power rapidly growing less 
and less, and would be lucky if in the end he did not, like the barber’s 
brother in the Arabian Nights’ tale, find the fresh, handsome 
tokens that the magician, u Interconvertibility,” had paid him, to 
be nothing but worthless leaves clipped in semblance of money. 
Mr. Mill says of this idea : u It calculates on finding the whole 
world persisting forever in the belief that more pieces of paper are 
more riches, and never discovering that, with all their paper, they 
cannot buy more of anything than they could before. No such 
mistake has ever been made during any of the periods of high 
prices. That which was mistaken for times of prosperity, were 
simply times of speculation—the speculators did not think they 
were growing rich because the high prices would last, but because 
they would not last, and because whoever contrived to realize while 
they did last would find himself, after the recoil, in possession of 
a greater number of pounds sterling without their having become 
of less value. If, at the close of speculation, high prices had been 
maintained, no one would be more disappointed than the specula¬ 
tors.” The great fortunes that were made during our war-inflation 
were made by men who bought commodities, and held them during 
the period when they went up and the paper went down, and were 
sagacious enough to dispose of the commodities and hold the paper 
while the reversed process went on; and the bankrupt-courts show 
a sad record of the fate of the thousands of business men who had 
not kept themselves in a position to do this. And, to-day, the 
truth is that although so many of us are afflicted with a plentiful 
lack of currency, there is a surplus of it in the country. 
Mr. Allis—whom I quote so often because he is the principal 
mouth-piece of the new party in our State, and because his ringing 
rhetoric is so dangerously eloquent—tells us that u millions of men 
stand eager and chafing for work where there is millions of work 
for every laborer.” Aye, and there are millions of money lying 
idle, the owners whereof would be glad to use it to bring the two 
