77 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pointed out. How much of disaster this decline has brought to great 

 business interests and to the material prosperity, and even the civiliza- 

 tion, of large areas of the earth's surface, will be made a subject of 

 future notice. 



Wheat. The next important commodity to the recent production 

 and price experiences of which attention will be asked, is wheat. The 

 average price of British wheat for the last week in July, 1882, was 

 50s. per imperial quarter. For the corresponding dates for 1885 it was 

 32s. l\d., and for 1886, 31s. od. per quarter ; * which last quotation was 

 the lowest since average market prices have been officially recorded, f 



The average price of wheat in the English markets for the decade 

 from 1870 to 1880 was 43 per cent higher than the average of 1886 ; 

 and the average prices from 1859 to 1872 were 68 per cent higher than 

 the average of 1886. 



An analysis of the comparative prices of wheat in the United 

 States furnishes corresponding results ; the average price of No. 2 

 spring wheat having declined in the Chicago market from $1.10 (gold) 

 in 1872 to 76 cents in 1886 ; and 67 cents in July, 1887 ; a price 

 equivalent to 29s. per quarter in the harbor at Liverpool, or 86 cents 

 per bushel, cost, freight, insurance included. This is about the lowest 

 price ever reported. The average annual export price of wheat for the 

 whole country declined from $1.24 per bushel, in 1880, to 86'2 in 1885, 

 and 87 in 1886. The average price of wheat in Chicago from 

 1872-'78 was $1.04 gold ; and the decline to the average price of 1886 

 was about 28 cents, representing a loss to the American producers of 

 wheat on an average crop of at least $150,000,000 per annum. For 

 such results an all-sufficient explanation would seem to be found in 

 the circumstance, that all investigation shows that the comparatively 

 recent increase in the world's supply of food has been greatly in ex- 

 cess of the concurrent increase of the world's population ; that there 

 has been in the last decade a large increase in the area of land devoted 

 to the cultivation of cereals ; an increase (due to better methods of 

 tillage) in the average product per acre ; and an immense increase in 

 the facilities for transportation, coupled with a greatly reduced cost, 

 which has made product more accessible and accordingly more avail- 

 able for distribution. The most salient points of the evidence tending 

 to these conclusions are as follows : The cereal production of the 

 United States increased from 932,752,000 bushels in 1862 to 2,992,- 

 881,000 in 1884 ; and in acreage from 34,594,381 to 136,292,766 ; or 

 in the respective ratios of 452 and 338 per cent, respectively. The 

 average wheat production of the United States for the five years from 



* London " Economist." 



\ The Eton record gave only 26s. 9}d. per quarter as the price for the year 1761, 

 when reduced to Winchester bushels ; but there is no certainty that the average for the 

 entire year was even in that one market as low as that, and still less that the price was 

 as low in more than one hundred and fifty English market towns as it was in 1886. 



