ABSTRACT
Irving Fisher was an inveterate crusader for causes. While the concern of this chapter is with his approach to monetary innovation, it is worthwhile to recall the multifaceted character of his interventions to set the world to rights. In 1925-at a moment when he could relish some extraordinary (though transitory) affluence-he wrote to his son that the financial resources generated by the sale of one of his inventions would enable him to further the “four chief causes…[he] had at heart.” He ranked them in the following order: “the abolition of war, disease, degeneracy, and instability of money.”1
