Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/801

Rh (27 per cent); of bacon and hams from 9·6 cents to 7·5 cents; and of lard from 9·4 cents to 6·9 cents. In the case of lard-oil an exceptionally great decline in price in recent years—i.e., from an average of 94 cents per gallon (Cincinnati market) in 1881-'82 to a minimum of 48·8 cents in 1886, is claimed to be due mainly to the large production and more general use of vegetable oils—cotton-seed oil in the United States, and palm and cocoanut oils in Europe. The effect of the increased quantity and cheapness of these vegetable oils has been especially marked in England, France, Italy, and Germany; and has also undoubtedly influenced the price of tallow, the decline in which in English markets, comparing the average prices of 1867-'77 with those of 1886, having been 31 per cent, while in the United States the price for 1884-'85 was the lowest on record.

—American cheese experienced an extraordinary decline in price from 12 and 13 cents in 1880 to 8 and 10  cents in 1885; and as the American contribution of this article of food to the world's consumption has constituted in recent years a large factor, the world's prices generally corresponded with those of the American market. This decline in the United States was due mainly to increased product; the relative prices of butter and cheese during the years 1880-'81 being so much to the advantage of the latter, that large quantities of milk which had previously gone to the creameries to be made into butter, found their way into factories to be made into cheese; and for the years 1883, 1884, and 1885 the annual receipts at New York city averaged 25 per cent in excess of the receipts for 1880. Demand for export at the same time largely fell off, and so assisted in the decline of prices; the same influences existing in the United States having also apparently prevailed to a degree in other cheese-producing countries, the amount recognized by the trade as supplied to the great cheese-consuming countries, Great Britain, the Continent of Europe, and South America, having increased from 1880 to 1884 to the extent of 14 per cent.

—The year 1884 in the United States was notable for a plethora of all kinds of dry and pickled fish on the one hand, and of extreme low prices of such commodities on the other; mackerel having touched a lower price in the Boston market than for any year since 1849, while for codfish the price was less than at any time since the year 1838.

—The decline in recent years in the prices of each of these great staple commodities has been almost as remarkable as has been the case with sugar, coffee having touched the lowest prices ever known in commerce in the early months of 1886, the price of "ordinary," or "exchange standard No. 5," having been 7 cents per pound in January of that year in the New York market; while, according to Mr. Giffen, of the British Board of Trade, the decline in the price of tea, comparing 1882 with 1861, has been greater than that of sugar,