measurement. What we can reckon is the havoc-value of the dollar by the intervals between the peaks of inflation and the troughs of depression, which represents not the virtue, but the viciousness, of our standard to the community.
There is, unfortunately, at this point a technical detail to be explained. If this, for the sake of the layman, is done very simply, there is a probability of offending both the engineer and the economist. However, facing this double risk, it is necessary to show that the full vibration reflected by prices is not revealed in the very concentrated “price-curves” we are accustomed to scan. These are a little like the charts upon
Figure 2
which a modern mother records the progressive weight-value of her child. Such a chart from 1910 to 1920 might show a benign ascending curve from year to year: but taken day by day there are very pregnant irregularities which represent some crisis when the child’s life hung in the balance. In the same way the annual fluctuations of our unit of value may result in a curve which looks like the profile of a gently rolling country, but if charted month by month, resembles much more nearly the jawbone of a crocodile. A curve from the hinge to the tip of a crocodile’s jaw may appear fairly benign, but it does not help the victim.
At the bottom of all this is the fact that the frequency of a vibration per second is much more important than its maximum