the tide of trade. When trade is active and prices of goods are rising, money is wanted by manufacturers for financing enterprise, and there is thus less available for investment and for financing speculation in securities. When Manchester, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Glasgow, and the other great centres of industry and commerce are so busy that they want every penny that they can raise to pay for materials and other current expenses, they are then likely in the first place to sell securities and so depress their prices and, further, by their clamorous demands on their banks for assistance, to reduce the amount that the banks can lend to the financial firms which use it in carrying the floating mass of securities which is the stock-in-trade of the investment market; and so some of it has to be sold and prices are further depressed. As they say on the Stock Exchange, trade and securities cannot boom together.
When money thus becomes scarce and dear, the securities that are most severely affected in price are the fixed rate creditor securities that are perpetual, or are not redeemable until a remote date. Those that have to be redeemed comparatively soon are naturally kept steady by that fact. Evidently a stock representing the obligation of a solvent debtor
