Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/511

Rh civilized world, multiplying much more rapidly than the population. M. de Neumann-Spallert, a statistician of high reputation for accuracy, has shown that the trade of the civilized world in cereals more than doubled between 1869 and 1879. Since then it has suffered a slight recoil. The production of cotton, which was estimated at 1,192,000,000 pounds in 1840, and 2,474,000,000 pounds in 1860, remained nearly stationary—increasing only about three and a half per cent—between 1860 and 1870, on account of the American civil war; but between 1870 and 1880 the crop of the United States rose from 1,540,000,000 to 3,161,000,000 pounds, and the crop of the whole world to 4,039,000,000 pounds, showing an increase of about sixty-seven per cent in ten years. But this is insignificant by the side of the increase that has been realized in the production of wool. A commercial circular, issued by one of the principal brokers of Antwerp, has recently established in the most striking manner the relations of the price to the quantity of wool imported into Europe. Taking into consideration the stocks of colonial wools coming from the three principal producing countries, Australia, the Cape Colony, and La Plata, we shall find that in 1864 the importations amounted to only 458,000 bales; in 1868 they had nearly doubled, and reached 879,000 bales. The price then fell to one franc eighty-five centimes (about twenty-five cents), and for a short time in 1869 to eighty-five centimes (or about seventeen cents), the lowest price that had then been known. For five or six years the importations remained stationary, or only increased a little, and prices stiffened. But in 1877 the importation was much more considerable, amounting to 1,272,000 bales, or forty per cent more than five years previously, and prices fell in nearly a corresponding proportion. For the next two or three years the colonial importations were stationary, and prices rose. But the increase in production was resumed; the importation of wools into Europe was estimated at 1,740,000 bales in 1885, and prices descended correspondingly. A considerable increase, though not so great, has taken place in the production of coffee, which has risen from 321,000 tons in 1855 to 588,000 tons in 1881, or sixteen per cent. This is not very great, but the increase in the use of coffee is still slower. The production of sugar has increased more rapidly. The increase in the production of cane-sugar in 1882 amounted to about one third in five years, and that of beet-sugar in 1883 to forty per cent in three years. Since these dates the production seems to have taken a new start.

A glance at the statistics of metal-working ought also to convince a reasonable man that the cause of the fall in prices should be sought in the conditions of the production of each article. Fine copper is one of those metals which have fallen most within fifteen years. The production of it, which was only 45,250 tons in 1850, and 67,370 tons in 1860, reached 82,120 tons in 1870, and over 120,000 tons in 1880,