92

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

towards the value of money. It is not truethat our former arrangements have workedwell. If we are to continue to draw the volun-tary savings of the community into “invest-ments,” we must make it a prime object ofdeliberate State policy that the standard ofvalue, in terms of which they are expressed,should be kept stable; adjusting in other ways(calculated to touch all forms of wealth equallyand not concentrated on the relatively helpless“investors”) the redistribution of the nationalwealth, if, in course of time, the laws of in-heritance and the rate of accumulation havedrained too great a proportion of the income ofthe active classes into the spending control ofthe inactive.

(ii) The Business Class

It has long been recognised, by the businessworld and by economists alike, that a period ofrising prices acts as a stimulus to enterprise andis beneficial to business men.

In the first place there is the advantage whichis the counterpart of the loss to the investingclass which we have just examined. When thevalue of money falls, it is evident that thosepersons who have engaged to pay fixed sums ofmoney yearly out of the profits of active businessmust benefit, since their fixed money outgoingswill bear a smaller proportion than formerly totheir money turnover. This benefit persistsnot only during the transitional period of