Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/459

 through importations, is shown by the circumstance that in the English debates upon the corn laws, about the year 1840, it was estimated, upon data furnished by Mr. Tooke, in his "History of Prices," that a deficiency of one sixth in the English harvest resulted in a rise of at least 100 per cent in the price of grain; and another estimate by Davenant and King, for the close of the seventeenth century, corroborates this apparently excessive statement. The estimate of these latter authorities was as follows:

As late as 1817, the difference in France between the highest and the lowest prices of grain in different parts of the country was 45 francs per hectolitre. In 1847 the average difference was 26 francs. Since 1870 the greatest difference at any time has not been in excess of 3·55 francs. The following table, given on German authority, and representing the price (in silver gulden per hectolitre) of grain for various periods, exhibits a like progress of price equalization between nations:

For grain henceforth, therefore, the railroad and the steamship have decided that there shall be but one market—the world; and that the margin for speculation in this commodity, so essential to the well-being of humanity, shall be restricted to very narrow limits.

The world's total product of pig-iron increased slowly and regularly from 1870 to 1879, at the rate of about 2 per cent per annum; but after 1879 production increased enormously, "until in 1883 the advance among all nations reached 182·2 per cent on the make of 1870; that of the United Kingdom being 143·0, and of other countries 239·1 per cent." (Testimony of Sir Lothian Bell, British Commission, 1886.) Such an increase, justified perhaps at the moment, was far in excess of the ratio of increase in the world's population, and for a term of years greatly disproportionate to any increase in the world's consumption, and finally resulted, as has been before shown (see previous paper), in an extreme depression in the business, and a remarkable fall of prices. One experience from this condition of affairs in the United States is worthy of being placed on record: For