Note 3 — Chapter XII · Getting Sober.

There was also a curious phenomenon incident to the situation, and pertaining to the rate of interest, which excited no little comment and attention. Every body took it for granted that with an unlimited supply of money a low rate of interest would prevail, and that, however much the financiers and philosophers might disagree about other things, this one result would be certain. An eminently practical man in one of the public debating societies of the island thought he had definitely, and for all time, settled the question by authoritatively remarking that “an abundance of money does produce enterprise, prosperity, and progress;” “that when money was plenty interest would be lower,” just as when horses and hogs are abundant, horses and hogs would be cheap. He, for one, “put aside all these old theories, these platitudes of finance.” There was “no vitality in them.” He preferred “to take the actual results, and the actual condition of the country, and let theory go to the dogs.”3