Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/304

290 One of the leading economists and financiers of France, M. Leroy Beaulieu, claims that the suffering has been greatest in his country, humiliated in war, shorn of her territory, and paying the maximum of taxation; but not a few stand ready to contest that claim in behalf of the United States, rejoicing in the maintenance of her national strength and dominion, and richer than ever in national resources.

Commenting upon the phenomena of the industrial depression subsequent to the early months of 1882, the Director of the United States National Bureau of Labor, in his report for 1886, considers the nations involved, in respect to their relations to each other and to severity of experience, to stand in the following order: Great Britain, the United States, Germany, France, Belgium. The investigations of the director also indicated a conclusion (of the greatest importance in the consideration of causes); namely, that the maximum of economic disturbance has been experienced in those countries in which the employment of machinery, the efficiency of labor, the cost and the standard of living, and the extent of popular education are the greatest; and the minimum in countries, like Austria, Italy, China, Mexico, South America, etc., where the opposite conditions prevail. These conclusions, which are concurred in by nearly all other investigators, apply, however, more especially to the years prior to 1883, as since then "depression" has manifested itself with marked intensity in such countries as Russia, Japan, Zanzibar, Uruguay, and Roumania.

The business of retail distribution generally—owing, probably, to the extreme cheapness of commodities—does not, moreover, appear to have been less profitable than usual during the so-called period of depression; in contradistinction to the business of production, which has been generally unprofitable.

It is also universally admitted that the years immediately precedent to 1873—i.e., from 1869 to 1872—constituted a period of most extraordinary and almost universal inflation of prices, credits, and business; which, in turn, has been attributed to a variety or sequence of influences; such as excessive speculation; excessive and injudicious construction of railroads in the United States, Central Europe, and Russia (1867–'73); the opening of the Suez Canal (1869); the Franco-German War (1870–71); and the payment of the enormous war indemnity of fifty-five hundred million francs (eleven hundred million dollars) which Germany exacted from France (1871–'73). The