(...)"prices will drop or whether it can be stabilized.
To show that permanent stability can be secured is the chief aim of this book; and a specific and detailed plan for this purpose is presented.
The first sketch of this plan was published in 1911 (in my Purchasing Power of Money). It was later presented before the International Congress of Chambers of Commerce at Boston, September, 1912, and again before the American Economic Association, December, 1912. The plan was elaborated in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, 1913.
In October, 1917, I gave the Hitchcock lectures at the University of California, using much of the material published now, for the first time, in this book. In the spring of 1918 a Committee of the American Economic Association, on the Purchasing Power of Money in relation to the War, indorsed the principle of stabilization and commended the subject to the earnest attention of statesmen and economists.
By this time academic economists had been largely won over to the idea, it having run the gantlet of their criticism for several years. The general support of economists marks (...)"