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174 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
crease, and happily increase greatly, in a comparatively
short period of years, in these days of continual pro-
gress in science and the applications of science, it
follows that if the standard for money is kept steady
with reference to the average of commodities, then it
must be unsteady with reference to incomes. Money
incomes and money wages must increase greatly on
the average, when real incomes and wages are increas-
ing, if the standard for money is at the same time kept
even with the average of commodities, that is, if prices
are prevented from falling. I do not see that this will
be at all a good thing. The rise of real wages between
1850 and 1870 was a good thing; but it would have
been better, had it taken the shape of stationary money
wages with a fall in prices.
Worse still, Mr. Williams contemplates a daily
change in his index number. And as there are always
great oscillations, this means that rates of wages would
have to be moved up and down continually, so as to
give th.e workman the benefit which he now obtains by
a fall of prices without any change in his nominal rate
of wages.
I cannot help thinking that our standard for money
in the last twenty years has answered social necessities
generally much better than a standard which would
have varied with the average of commodities. There
has been some rise in money incomes and wages in the
interval, but not a great rise, and the community
generally and workmen particularly have got the benefit
of the appreciation of the standard measured by com-
modities quietly and almost unconsciously, without the
excitement which would probably have accompanied a
great rise of money wages, such as would have been
necessary with" a value of bullion standard" to enable
them to receive the advantage of the rise in real wages
that they have enjoyed.
In this view, then, the mere statement that" a value
of bullion standard" will probably diminish fluctuations
in the prices of commodities is not the same thing as a