FALL IN THE POUND.
Now, however, let me deal with the deeper motives underlying the sales of investment stocks which took place a few days previous to our departure from the gold standard by those who were evidently apprehensive of the event and with those which have inspired the selling since. Our inability to maintain the old gold standard has meant that our currency in terms, of the currencies of the two principal countries on the gold standard, namely, France and the United States, has greatly depreciated. Thus, at one time last week the value of the pound as expressed in American and French currency was just under 15s. This, of course, in its turn, means that any purchases of commodities or of goods from those countries would have cost us about 20 per cent. more—having to pay for them in dollars and francs— than before we departed from the gold standard. If we were making those purchases ourselves, our income expressed in purchasing power would have been that much smaller. Or if the purchases, as is more probable, were made by wholesale dealers and manufacturers here, then their charges to us for the supply of the foodstuffs, com- modities or other articles would have risen, thus again demonstrating that the money in our pockets had no longer the same purchasing power.
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