THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 789 



per man per annum. For Germany, the increase was from 261 tons 

 in 1881 to 269 tons in 1883 ; and in Belgium, for corresponding years, 

 from 165 tons to 178 tons per miner. 



Recent inventions have also done much to reduce the amount of 

 coal formerly used to effect industrial results, particularly in the case 

 of blast-furnaces and coke-ovens. For example, at blast-furnaces, coal 

 was formerly used for heating the boilers that furnished steam for 

 blowing, hoisting, etc., and for heating the air which was blown into 

 the stacks. Now, a well-ordered set of blast-furnaces does not use a 

 single ounce of coal except what goes in to melt the ore. The whole 

 of the heat used to produce the steam required in connection with the 

 furnace, and for heating the stoves for making the hot blast, is ob- 

 tained from the gases which rise to the top of the stacks in the pro- 

 cess of smelting the iron, and which formerly was all thrown away.* 



Petroleum. Crude petroleum declined in the American market 

 from an average of $3.86 (gold) per barrel in 1870 to 87 cents per 

 barrel in 1885, and 71 cents in 1886, a total decline of over 80 per cent. 



The American annual production (including Canada) increased 

 during the same period from 5,510,745 barrels in 1870 to 30,626,100 

 in 1882, declining to 25,798,000 in 1886. 



That the production and price experiences of the great staple 

 fibers of commerce and consumption in recent years have not been dis- 

 similar to those of the foods and metals, will also appear from the fol- 

 lowing : 



Cotton - . Comparing 1860 with 1885, the decline in the price of 

 American cotton (middling uplands) in the New York market has not 

 been material. The year 1886, however, witnessed a decline to a lower 

 point (8^-f) than has been reached, with one exception, since the year 

 1855 ; the exception occurring just after the failure of the Glasgow 

 Bank in Scotland in 1878, the lowest quotations in both years being 

 exactly the same. On the other hand, the increase in the world's sup- 

 ply of cotton in recent years has been very considerable, the American 

 crop increasing from 3,930,000 bales in 1872-'73 to 6,575,000 in 

 1885-'86, or 67 per cent ; while the supply of the world for the cor- 

 responding period is estimated to have increased from 6,524,000 bales 

 to 8,678,000 bales, or at the rate of about 32 per cent. Such an in- 

 crease in production would undoubtedly have occasioned a more 

 marked decline in price, had it not been for a great and coincident in- 

 crease in the world's consumption of cotton fabrics ; which, in turn, 

 was undoubtedly in consequence of a material decline in the cost of 

 the same, as the result of improvements in machinery and methods of 

 production ; the equivalent of the labor of an operative in the facto- 

 ries of New England having increased from 12,164 yards in 1850 to 

 19,293 in 1870, and 28,032 in 1884, while the reduction in the price of 



* Testimony of J. D. Ellis, chairman of John Brown & Co., Sheffield, British Com- 

 mission, 1886. 



