THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 773 



the remarkable fall of prices which has been recently experienced. 

 It is, however, a universally accepted canon, alike in logic and com- 

 mon sense, that extraordinary and complex agencies should never be 

 invoked for the explanation of phenomena, so long as ordinary and 

 simple ones are equally available and satisfactory for the same pur- 

 pose. And with this premise, it is a matter of the highest interest and 

 importance to observe how, with very few exceptions, the phenomenal 

 decline in recent years of the prices of the world's great staple com- 

 modities admits not only of a ready and complete explanation in ac- 

 cordance with the first cause, but is, in fact, in the nature of an inevi- 

 table sequence from it ; and, in support of this proposition, attention 

 is asked to the nature of the agencies which have been so identical, 

 absolute, and exclusive in determining the recent decline of prices in 

 the case of such a number of what must be regarded as typically staple 

 commodities, that their conjoined experiences would seem so fully to 

 establish a rule, as almost to compel all antagonizing results, especially 

 in the case of products of minor importance, to be regarded in the 

 light of unimportant exceptions. 



What these agencies have been, how they have acted, and what 

 disturbing influences they have exerted on the world's prices, on the 

 world's industries, commerce, and consumption, and on pre-existing 

 relations of labor and capital, will, when fully told, constitute one of 

 the most important and interesting chapters of political economy and 

 commercial history. Such a complete statement it is not at present 

 proposed to attempt ; but the following exhibit of results, derived 

 from a study of what may be termed the recent production and price 

 experiences of a considerable number of important commodities, will, 

 it is thought, better contribute to an understanding of the situation, 

 and to a solution of the difficult economic problems involved in it, than 

 any other method hitherto adopted.* 



The commodity of prime importance in the commerce and con- 

 sumption of the world, which appears to have experienced the great- 

 est recent decline in price, is sugar, which has fallen to a lower rate 

 than has ever been known in the history of modern commerce ; the 

 wholesale price of fair refining sugars having been more than 1 14 per 

 cent higher in 1880 than in the first half of the year 1887.f 



Now, while improved methods of manufacture and greater and 



* " A general movement in prices is the resultant of a number of particular movements, 

 and in these particular movements, again, we find the proximate causes of the distribution 

 of the industrial forces of the world and of the wealth which these forces create." 

 Professor Nicholson, University of Edinburgh, etc. 



\ How continuous and regular has been the decline in the price of sugars in recent 

 years is shown by the following table, which exhibits the average price of fair refining 

 sugars in bond (or free of duty) in New York from 18S0 to July, 1S87, inclusive: 



1880, 5-08 cents. 1885, 3'06 cents. 



1882, 4-53 cents. 1886, 2-92 cents. 



1884, 3-31 cents. 1887 (lowest to July), 2'3'7. 



