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A TREATISE ON MONEY

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tend to remain where they are. It will require notmerely the expectation of higher profits elsewhere tomove them, but the pinch of lower profits and even thethreat of bankruptcy unless they move. It followsthat the new men will not easily get hold of the re-sources, necessary to enable them to put their ideasinto practice as soon as they should in the socialinterest, if they have to wait until the establishedentrepreneurs now controlling them voluntarily re-linquish them in their favour. It is better therefore—so the argument runs—that the new borrowers shouldat times be given an opportunity of resources byan act of Commodity Inflation, or enabled to bidagainst the established firms by an act of IncomeInflation, if progress is to proceed at its proper pace.We must concede real force to this. It is a by-product of strenuous times, and indeed of misfortunesgenerally, that the new men and methods rise morerapidly to the top than in eras of placid prosperity.But, obviously, it is a question of balancing advan-tages and of the price to be paid. Moreover, the usualups and downs of individual industries will oftenprovide quite an adequate stimulus without its beingnecessary to engineer the general disturbances whichwe are now discussing. Currency stability does notmean universal quiescence and a prevailing atmos-phere of no change. The average stability at which itaims is one in which the losses of entrepreneurs in onedirection are approximately balanced by the gains ofthis class in another direction, so that there is nogeneral tendency to boom or slump super-imposed onthe progress or on the decline of particular industriesand particular entrepreneurs. It is not one in whichthe Survival of the Fittest by the operation of profitand loss has been suspended.

(ii.) Mr. Robertson contends that in certain circum-stances changes in the general price-level, as distinctfrom particular price-changes, will enable the factors