o metals than it can by using one.

_Effects of Free Coinage._--It is evident that when a government coins
without charge all the gold and silver that are brought to it for that
purpose, either metal will be worth about as much in the form of
bullion as it is in the form of coin. If, for uses in the arts, an
ounce of gold is worth more than the number of dollars that can be
made of it, the coining of this metal will temporarily cease and some
coins already made will be melted. Moreover, where both of the
precious metals are used as money, neither of them can long be worth
in a coin much more than is the bullion contained in the less valuable
of the two. If a gold dollar will buy more silver than is needed to
make a silver dollar, because of the higher value of the bullion in
the former coin, silver will be bought and taken to the mint for
coinage, while gold dollars will be melted. The gold will go farther
in the way of paying debts when it is in this way exchanged for silver
money.

_The Effects of Inflation of Currency on Prices._--We are citing a
further accepted fact when we say that, other things being equal,
enlarging the volume of currency in use raises the prices of goods. By
what particular mechanism this is brought about we do not here
inquire. Not everything that is claimed under the head of a "quantity
theory of money" is generally believed, but there will be little
disposition anywhere to deny that, if no other dynamic movement should
take place, adding fifty per cent to the volume of metallic money in
circulation would make prices higher than they were before the
addition.

_Rising Prices and Business Profits._--If we assert, further, that
permanently rising prices mean prosperity,--profits for the
_entrepreneur_ and a brisk demand for labor and capital,--we assert
what, in the practical world, is too generally accepted. Sound theory
and current belief are at variance on this point, and the current
opinion appears at first glance to have the facts on its side. Periods
of rising prices have actually been periods of prosperity. It is
considered hard for either a merchant or a manufacturer "to do
business on a falling market," and easy to make money on a rising one.
This impression is entirely correct in so far as it concerns those
fluctuations of price which occur suddenly and continue only briefly.
What it is of great importance to know is whether a steady rise of
prices which should continue permanentl