Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/796

776 pointed out. How much of disaster this decline has brought to great business interests and to the material prosperity, and even the civilization, of large areas of the earth's surface, will be made a subject of future notice.

—The next important commodity to the recent production and price experiences of which attention will be asked, is wheat. The average price of British wheat for the last week in July, 1882, was 50s. per imperial quarter. For the corresponding dates for 1885 it was 32s. 11d., and for 1886, 31s. 3d. per quarter; which last quotation was the lowest since average market prices have been officially recorded.

The average price of wheat in the English markets for the decade from 1870 to 1880 was 43 per cent higher than the average of 1886; and the average prices from 1859 to 1872 were 68 per cent higher than the average of 1886.

An analysis of the comparative prices of wheat in the United States furnishes corresponding results; the average price of No. 2 spring wheat having declined in the Chicago market from $1.10 (gold) in 1872 to 76 cents in 1886; and 67 cents in July, 1887; a price equivalent to 29s. per quarter in the harbor at Liverpool, or 86 cents per bushel, cost, freight, insurance included. This is about the lowest price ever reported. The average annual export price of wheat for the whole country declined from $1.24 per bushel, in 1880, to 86·2 in 1885, and 87 in 1886. The average price of wheat in Chicago from 1872-'78 was $1.04 gold; and the decline to the average price of 1886 was about 28 cents, representing a loss to the American producers of wheat on an average crop of at least $150,000,000 per annum. For such results an all-sufficient explanation would seem to be found in the circumstance, that all investigation shows that the comparatively recent increase in the world's supply of food has been greatly in excess of the concurrent increase of the world's population; that there has been in the last decade a large increase in the area of land devoted to the cultivation of cereals; an increase (due to better methods of tillage) in the average product per acre; and an immense increase in the facilities for transportation, coupled with a greatly reduced cost, which has made product more accessible and accordingly more available for distribution. The most salient points of the evidence tending to these conclusions are as follows: The cereal production of the United States increased from 932,752,000 bushels in 1862 to 2,992,881,000 in 1884; and in acreage from 34,594,381 to 136,292,766; or in the respective ratios of 452 and 338 per cent, respectively. The average wheat production of the United States for the five years from