Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/789

Rh, is, that no peculiarity of currency, banking, or standard of value, or form of government, or incidence and degree of taxation, or military system, or condition of land tenure, or legislation respecting trade, tariffs and bounties, or differences in the relations between capital and labor in different countries, has been sufficient to guard and save any nation from the economic disturbances or trade depression which has been incident to such changes in prices.

An analysis of British exports and imports for 1886, with comparisons of similar data for the previous year, 1885 (presented by the "London Economist" in its issues for January 22 and 29, 1887), furnishes, moreover, some information, almost, if not fully, in the nature of a demonstration of the continued tendency of prices to decline during the latest period for which accurate data are (at present) accessible, and also of the continued universality of such tendency. Thus, looking first at exports, it appears that there was an increase during the year 1886 in the quantities of British and colonial commodities exported of 6·02 per cent, as compared with similar aggregates for 1885; or Great Britain sent out 106,020 pounds, tons, or other quantities in 1886, in place of 100,000 in 1885. Comparing, however, the sum which the quantities actually exported in 1886 would have cost at the prices of 1885, a decline in price is indicated of 6·34 per cent; or while sending away 106,020 pounds, tons, or other quantities in 1886, as compared with 100,000 in 1885, Great Britain received back in money value only $893,660 for the same quantities which in the previous year brought $100,000.

"A similar examination of British imports for 1886 also brings out the further interesting fact that the average decline in the prices of the goods imported was almost precisely the same as in prices of goods exported. The increase in quantities of imports was less than one per cent; or the country brought in 100,796 pounds, tons, or other quantities, in place of 100,000 in 1885. But the decline in prices was 6·373 per cent; so that the country paid only $93,627 for the same quantities for which it paid $100,000 in the previous year. The decline in the general range of prices for the year 1886, as measured by the actual exports and imports of the greatest exporting and importing nation of the world, would therefore appear to have been in excess of six per cent; and this decline would seem to have occurred during the same period in all those countries in which Great Britain deals as a seller equally with those in which she deals as a buyer; or, in other words, this decline was practically universal."

The question which here naturally suggests itself, as to what in general has been the extent of the recent fall in prices, is perhaps best answered from the basis of English figures, by Mr. Augustus Sauerbeck, who, as the result of an exhaustive inquiry into the price movements of thirty-eight leading articles of raw produce since 1818-'27