of the money unit, which goes to show how essential a principle in business traffic is the putative invariability of the money unit."
Usage fortified by law decides that when prices vary the vaiiatiou ia held to occur in the value of the vendible commodities, not in the value of the money unit, since money is the standard of value. There is, of course, no intention here to question the position, familiar to all economists, that fluctuations in the course of prices may as well be due
1 Economists axe In the habil of speaking of money ai of exch&nge, a " great wheel " for the circulation of goods. In the same connection businetu traffic is spolteu of as a means of obtaining goods suitable for consumption, the end uf all [mrcliase and sate being consumable gooda, not money values. It may be true ij profound philosophical sense that money values are not the deflnitiTS term of buBinesa endeavor, and that the business man seeks through the mediation of money to satisfy bis craving for consimiable goods. Looking at the process of economic life aa a whole and taking it in its ralJonatizBd bearing aa a collective endeavor to purvey goods and services for the needs ol collective humanity, the office of the monej' unit — money transoctiona, exchange, credit, and all Uie rest that make up the phenomena of buaineaa — is perhaps justly rated as aometliing subsidiary, serving tn faci11tA(« the distribution of consumable goods to the consumers, the consumption of goods being the objective point of all this traffic. Such Is the view of this matter given by the ratJonatlstie, normalizing speculations of the eighleenth-century philosophers ; and such ia, in auhatance, the view spoken for by thoM economislfl who still conaisfently remain at the alandpoinl ot the eighteenth century. The contention need neither be defended nor refuted here, since it does not seriously touch the facia of modem