both expensive and unpopular. No use could be made by the Government of the currency received from subscribers to the new loan; it would have to be destroyed, to carry out the scheme, and so the operation would be dead loss; at a time of expansive prosperity implied by the circumstances the Government would probably have to pay a handsome rate to get its loan out, and it would have to lay this sacrifice on the shoulders of the taxpayer, knowing that thereby, if the measure succeeded, it would be checking the rise in prices that makes the business world so happy.
There would probably be plenty of people who would argue, that the Index Numbers, which are supposed to record the average movement of the prices of the principal commodities, were all wrong, and that prices are not really rising at all. Dr. E. C. Snow in an article in the Manchester Guardian Commercial of July 19, 1923, observed that "the perplexity in which those who have attempted to make practical deductions from the movements of price Index Numbers in the past few years have been placed is sufficient evidence of the inadequacy of these Index Numbers for the purpose." And as I write in August of the same year, a dock strike is still going on which began because the dockers, whose pay was to be
