"balace of payments" is used

Today, a account will be presented of the history ad the present status of the theory of the mechaism of adjustment of international balaces, in terms throughout of the simplifying assumption of a international simple specie currency, i.e., with the circulating medium consisting solely of stadard metallic money. It was in terms of this assumption that the theory was first presented, ad it has served ever since as a convenient device whereby to segregate for separate treatment different problems connected with the mechaism. It should be noted that in this chapter, as throughout the book, the term is used in its original sense of a excess of immediate claims on abroad over obligations to abroad, or vice versa, which must be liquidated by specie. It should be noted also that by a "disturbace" to international equilibrium will be meat a chage in one of the elements in a preexisting equilibrium such as to require a new equilibrium, ad that this chage, whether it takes the form of a series of crop failures, of international tributes or loas, of new import duties, or of a relative chage in the demads of the two countries for each other's products, is presumed to continue indefinitely, ad its cessation is treated as a new chage in the reverse direction. A wide variety of disturbaces ca be used to illustrate the theory of the mechaism of international import ad export, ad each has its own sequence of stages ad to some extent its own set of special problems. A selection must be made, therefore, ad the reader is asked not to attribute to me or to the writers cited generalization of the conclusions reached from the aalysis of cases specifically dealt with beyond what the context clearly shows to be intended.