Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/465

Rh statistics and these tables are illustrative. Some of them are as absurd as would be tables to prove increase in cost of living by comparing the price of diaphanous calico in 1858 with that of the finest cambric muslin in 1913. The writer has lived in New York city during almost three quarters of a century and he knows that, whatever may be the conditions elsewhere, prices of the essential articles of food, with few exceptions, show comparatively little increase during the last fifty years, while some show a marvelous decrease—material of the same quality being compared throughout. Beef, such as nearly all New Yorkers ate sixty years ago, can be purchased at hundreds of large shops at barely 20 per cent, higher price; flour, grade for grade, has not risen in price, while the great fluctuations in price of the olden time are unknown—in 1854 or 1855 the writer paid twelve dollars for a barrel of family flour for his father; eggs, grade for grade, are, thanks to cold storage, little higher during the winter months than they were many years ago; while refined sugar costs to-day little more than was charged for a light brown sugar in 1858. Butter and hog products have increased in cost and are likely to continue increasing until ruled off the list of foods. The growth of urban population has destroyed the butter industry, as sale of milk is more profitable and less burdensome. In former times, when corn was worth only a few cents per bushel, western farmers had their choice between using it as fuel or converting it into pork. But corn is worth now from 50 to 70 cents per bushel, according to the crop, and it can not be converted into pork except at a loss. Pork will disappear as a food staple and butter will be replaced by the more wholesome oleomargarine products. Within our large cities, an anomalous condition exists in the price of vegetables. Wholesale prices have not increased, indeed in many cases, they have decreased greatly; yet because of archaic methods of distribution, the retail cost is greater. But this does not concern the general question.

The stability of prices of the food staples, in spite of increasing demand, is due to several causes, of which only three need be noted; the consolidation of continuous transportation lines, which has made possible the extraordinary low freight rates in this country; the consolidation and localization of manufacturing interests, which has increased available capital and has led to introduction of improved methods; the ingenuity of inventors, which has made unnecessary a vast quantity of unskilled, even of skilled labor. Our flour is from Dakota wheat ground in Minneapolis and our beef is from western cattle slaughtered in Chicago, yet the prices are, at most, little higher than those paid sixty years ago for flour brought by water from Rochester and Richmond, or for beef from Ohio and New York.

But in some other directions, where the inventor's work has not kept pace with expansion or where trade-union influence has prevented full utilization, the effect of increased wages is only too manifest; the