We had a stable money supply for 100+ years ...It's good to know you've been studying the money supply over the past 100+ years --please share your numbers/sources with us. All that I've been able to dig up are employment, price, income, and gdp numbers-- all of which have been relatively flat in recent decades compared to the bonkers gold standard era.
Sorry, you are correct, I do not have hard numbers for actual money supply, I misspoke. We were legally on a hard currency standard during that time, so officially, the money supply would be growing only as quickly as new gold were added to the system. Historically, this has been on the order of 2-3%/yr. However, from the link below we see that from 1800-1900, the CPI rose in 22 years, was flat in 38 years and fell in 40 years. And the CPI in 1800 was twice as high as in 1900. Threfore, over the course of one of the greatest periods of economic growth ever seen, there was mild deflation that made money twice as valuable. If mild and expected deflation was the demon it is claimed to be, how is any of this possible?
http://woodrow.mpls.frb.fed.us/research/data/us/calc/hist1800.cfm