Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/600

582 which, without such a leaven of stimulus, would probably never be undertaken. The so-called cycles of inflation and depression have also undoubtedly in recent years become more frequent and intense, because the instrumentalities of production and distribution work more rapidly in effecting results than at any former period.

One universally recognized and, to some persons, perplexing peculiarity of the recent long-continued depression in trade is, the circumstance that while profits have been so largely reduced that, as the common expression goes, "it has not paid to do business," the volume of trade throughout the world has not contracted, but, measured by quantities rather than by values, has in many departments notably increased. The following are some of the more notable examples of the evidence that can be offered in confirmation of this statement:

The years 1879, 1880, and 1881, for the United States were years of abundant crops and great foreign demand, and are generally acknowledged to have been prosperous; while the years 1882, 1883, and 1884 are regarded as having been years of extreme depression and reaction. And yet the movement of railroad freights throughout the country greatly increased during this latter as compared with the former period; the tonnage carried by six railroads centering at Chicago in 1884 having been nearly thirty-three per cent greater than in 1881; and the tonnage carried one mile by all the railroads of the United States in 1884—a year of extreme depression—having been 5,000,000,000 in excess of that carried in 1882; and this, notwithstanding there was a great falling off, in 1884, in the carriage of material for new railroad construction. Again, the foreign commerce of the United States, measured in dollars, largely declined during the same later period; but, measured in quantities, there was but little decrease, and in the case of not a few leading articles a notable increase. Thus, for the year 1885, the total value of the foreign commerce of the country in merchandise was $93,251,921 less than in the preceding year (1881), but of this decrease $90,170,304, according to the estimates of the United States Bureau of Statistics, represented a decline in price. An export of 70,000,000 bushels of wheat from the United States in 1884 returned $75,000,000; while an export of 84,500,000 in 1885 gave less than $73,000,000. An export of 389,000,000 pounds of bacon and hams in 1884 brought in nearly $40,000,000; but shipments of 400,000,000 pounds in 1885 returned but $37,000,000, or an increase of foreign sales of about 11,000,000 pounds was accompanied by a decline of about $3,000,000 in price. In 1884 the United States paid about $50,000,000 for 535,000,000 pounds of imported coffee; in 1885 it imported 573,000,000 pounds for $47,000,000. In 1877, 216,287,891 gallons of exported petroleum were valued at $44,209,360; but in 1886, 303,911,698 gallons (or 87,623,000 gallons more) were valued at only $24,685,767, a decline in value of $19,683,000. But the most remarkable