Excerpt from Credit, Vol. 3 Starting with credit as a transfer of goods involving an obligation to return an equivalent in the future, we find in practice that credit hasin modern society devel oped into something more akin to money. Clearly enough, it does not act as a standard, or common denominator. Its relation to the subject of money is to be found in the fact that society has in credit created a medium of exchange. It is the natural result of the ever-present premium existing in business transactions to evolve a means of avoiding the risk and loss attending the actual transfer of the valuable standard; and it remains in use because transactions involving futurity are thereby rendered possible and legitimate to the immense advantage of commerce and industry. It is the evolution of a refined system of barter, rendered necessary by division of labor, the interdependence of industries, and the introduction of the time element. A clear understanding that credit is based on goods, that its service is that of a medium of exchange, is necessary to a just treatment of the difficult question of the efiect of credit upon the prices of goods, to be discussed later. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.