shown later, their came a time in the after-war period when those who maintain this simple proposition that continued multiplication and consequent depreciation of the currency really tends to a country's prosperity, in other words that bad money makes us all rich and happy, really had some practical experience to which they were able to point as bearing out this view; and the question whether bad money pays is one which will have to be quite seriously discussed before we have done with the subject.
Sir Edward Holden, of course, would not have admitted that the huge expansion made possible by the Federal Reserve system would have involved anything like bad money, even if it had been carried out to its full extent. He proceeded to argue that since Germany at the beginning of the war altered her Bank Act, and during the war America altered hers, we should do the same thing and repeal the Bank Act which," he said, "has been notorious for increasing our troubles" and has had to be suspended on four occasions. The rather relevant fact, that the last date before the war on which the Act had been suspended was in 1866, he did not mention. The principles for which he contended are those on which other national banks of issue, according to his
