496 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and this figure was passed in the following years. The case is not 

 different with lead, the production of which, 104,000 tons in 1830 and 

 170,500 tons in 1850, passed 379,000 tons in 1880, or was more than 

 doubled in thirty years. The production of iron has doubled in ten 

 years, and that of coal increased about 145 per cent in twenty years. 



We might pursue this enumeration almost to infinity. If, however, 

 instead of studying the special and precise cause of the depression in 

 the price of each article, we seek the more general causes, they are 

 easy to find. The question of the metal silver is foreign to them. The 

 general causes may be reduced to the following : The whole world is 

 much better explored than it was twenty years ago, and all the natu- 

 ral riches, the best lands, and the best deposits, are better known. 

 Capital, having become more abundant, is more mobile and more 

 active, bolder, more ready to change places, and more transportable 

 than it was a quarter of a century ago, so that the simple announce- 

 ment of the discovery of a new source of wealth at any place in the 

 world almost immediately induces attempts to make it available. The 

 rise of anonymous business societies, or companies, has an importance 

 of which we are hardly yet beginning to take account ; the substitu- 

 tion of this powerful collective force for the molecular forces of per- 

 sonal and isolated capital has transformed and sometimes decupled the 

 efficacy of investment. Men also have become less sedentary, and 

 eagerly follow their capital wherever it calls them and promises 

 them remuneration. The progress of industry, manifested by inven- 

 tions, discoveries, improved processes, and even workmen's slights, is 

 contributing daily to this incessant development of production and 

 cheapening of prices. The last factor, and not the least energetic one, 

 is the improvement of the means of transportation, especially by sea, 

 during the last fifteen years, by virtue of which it is calculated that 

 every English ship can now carry twice as much freight as in 1870, 

 three times as much as in 1860, and four times as much as in 1850. 



These are the general and incontestable causes which have acted, 

 and are continuing to act, upon the provisioning of the world. To 

 seek the explanation of the fall of prices anywhere else is willfully to 

 close one's eyes. It is vain to pretend that the fall of silver, which 

 amounts to twenty-two per cent of the value given it in our monetary 

 tariff, gives the Indies an advantage in exportation. Amid phenom- 

 ena so vast and striking, this is only an insignificant detail. The 

 greater part of the goods which have drooped in price are not pro- 

 duced in countries having a silver standard. The great marts of pro- 

 duction of copper, for example, are not in the East, but in the West 

 in Spain and the United States. So with iron and with wool, which is 

 peculiarly the product of countries having a gold standard. Sugar and 

 cotton, also, are most largely produced in countries where the fall in 

 silver can have no direct influence. 



It would be well if we could come to an understanding of the real 



