7 8z THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or, indeed, of almost any other article. In both cases the decline would 

 seem to find a sufficient explanation in a common expression of the 

 trade circulars, " Our supplies have far outrun our consumptive re- 

 quirements." In the case of coffee, the total imports into Europe 

 and the United States, comparing the receipts of the year 1885 with 

 1873, showed an increase of 57 per cent ; while the increase in the 

 crops of Brazil, Ceylon, and Java during the same period has been esti- 

 mated at 52 per cent. Subsequent to January, 1886, the price of 

 coffee, owing to a partial failure of the Brazil crop, rapidly ad- 

 vanced more than 150 per cent, " ordinary " or " exchange " stand- 

 ards having sold in New York in June, 1886, at 22 cents per pound, 

 the highest point in the history of American trade, unless possibly 

 during the war, when entirely abnormal circumstances controlled 

 prices. From these high prices there was a subsequent disastrous 

 reaction and extensive failures. In the matter of the supply of tea, 

 the total exports from China and India increased from 234,000,000 

 pounds in 1873 to 337,000,000 pounds in 1885, or 44 per cent ; the 

 exports from India having increased from 35,000,000 pounds in 1879 

 to 68,000,000 pounds in 1885.* 



Hops. The report of the German Hop-Growers' Association for 

 1886 estimates the quantity grown throughout the world in that year 

 at 93,340 tons, and the annual consumption at only 83,200 tons, so 

 that there was an excess of production over consumption in 1886 of 

 nearly 10,000 tons. As might have been expected, there was a nota- 

 ble decline in the world's prices for hops. 



Such having been the production and price experience in recent 

 years of the world's great food commodities, attention is next invited 

 to a similar record of experience in respect to the metals. 



Iron. Sir Lowthian Bell, recognized as one of the best authorities 

 on the production of iron and steel, in his testimony before the Royal 

 British Commission in 1885, fixed the world's production of pig-iron 

 in 1870 at 11,565,000 tons, which increased to 14,345,000 tons in 1872. 

 From that date production continued almost stationary until 1879, 



* The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Goschcn, in his budget speech for 

 1887, calls attention to the following curious incident of financial disturbance growing 

 out of a change in the quality of a staple commodity tea which, in turn, has been con- 

 tingent on a change in the locality or country of its production : " Whereas, ten years 

 ago," he said, "we (Great Britain) received 156,000,000 pounds of tea from China and 

 28,000,000 pounds from India, or 184,000,000 pounds altogether, in 1886 we received 

 145,000,000 pounds from China and 81,000,000 pounds from India. In the transfer of 

 consumption of tea from the tea of China to that of India, we have to put up with a loss 

 of revenue owing to the curious fact that the teas of India are stronger than the teas of 

 China, and therefore go further, so that a smaller quantity of tea is required to make the 

 same number of cups of tea." Mr. Goschcn further called attention to the fact that 

 " the fall in the price of tea and sugar (in Great Britain) has been so great, that whereas 

 in 1866 a pound of tea and a pound of sugar would have cost 2s. 6d. and in 1876 2*. l\d., 

 in 1886 they would have cost only Is. 1{d., or Zd. less than they would have cost in 1S66 

 with all the duties taken off." 



