THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1887. 



THE ECONOMIC DISTUKBANCES SINCE 1873. 



By Hok. DAVID A. WELLS, LL. D. 

 I. 



THE existence of a most curious and, in many respects, unprece- 

 dented disturbance and depression of trade, commerce, and indus- 

 try, which, first manifesting itself in a marked degree in 1873, has 

 prevailed with fluctuations of intensity up to the present date of writing 

 (1887), is an economic and social phenomenon that has been every- 

 where recognized. Its most noteworthy peculiarity has been its uni- 

 versality ; affecting nations that have been involved in war as well as 

 those which have maintained peace ; those which have a stable cur- 

 rency, based on gold, and those which have an unstable currency, 

 based on promises which have not been kept ; those which live under 

 a system of free exchange of commodities, and those whose exchanges 

 are more or less restricted. It has been grievous in old communities 

 like England and Germany, and equally so in Australia, South Africa, 

 and California, which represent the new ; it has been a calamity exceed- 

 ing heavy to be borne, alike by the inhabitants of sterile Newfound- 

 land and Labrador, and of the sunny, fruitful sugar-islands of the West 

 Indies ; and it has not enriched those at the centers of the world's 

 exchanges, whose gains are ordinarily the greatest when business is 

 most fluctuating and uncertain.* 



* The poverty in Australia, in 1885, was reported to be more extreme than at any 

 former period in the history of the colonies ; multitudes at Adelaide, South Australia, 

 surrounding the Government House and clamoring for food the causes of distress 

 assigned being failure of the harvest, drought, and general commercial depression. 



"The close of the year 1884 brought with it little, if any, improvement, in the ma- 

 terial condition of South Africa. Commercial disasters may not have been so frequent as 

 during the previous year, but this may be explained by the fact that trade has reached so 

 low a level that very little room existed for further failures. No new enterprises have 

 vol. xxxi. 19 



