Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/309

Rh and beneficent functions, be a flat failure. For what is the inventive genius of the age that devotes itself to practical objects engaged in; what else than in devising and developing means and methods by which the things required by mankind for the sustenance and comfort of life be made better and more easily attainable; that is, cheaper?

The farmer in the United States welcomed the agricultural machinery which helps him in planting, raising and harvesting his crop. He welcomed the railroad, the steamboat, the low freights, the telegraph, which shortened the distance between his farm and the market, and the banking arrangements required for moving and selling his product. But as nearly all our farmers had the same encouragement, so it followed quite naturally that the wheat crop of this country increased from an annual average of 312,000,000 bushels between 1870 and 1880 to an annual average of 475,000,000 bushels between 1890 and 1895. But also foreign countries had the encouraging benefit. New wheat fields were opened in Russia and the Argentine Republic and elsewhere; and, according to Bradstreet's (a very competent authority), the wheat product of the world grew from 1889 to 1894 no less than 429,000,000 bushels, while the world's consumption is estimated to increase only 12,000,000 to 16,000,000 bushels annually. When the increase of the world's supply thus gains upon the increase of the world's demands is it a wonder that in the world's market, which rules the price for all exporting countries, prices should have declined? Is not this an infinitely more rational explanation of the decline in prices than to ascribe that decline to the so-called demonetization law of 1873, which practically demonetized nothing, but was actually followed by an increase of our currency, nearly trebling its volume, and making the per capita far, far higher than it ever had