THE NEW YORK JOURNAL OF PHARMACY 



EFFECTS OF THE EUROPEAN 

 WAR. 



The drug market has not suffered as 

 much as might be supposed, of course 

 the prices of a few articles have risen 

 momentarily, but as soon as there is a 

 decisive victory on the sea, trade will be 

 less perilous and the market will find 

 itself with its prices only slightly higher 

 than before the war. Shipping, at pres- 

 ent, is nearly at a standstill as far as 

 Europe is concerned owing to the lack 

 of American owned vessels. However, 

 with passage of the Registry Bill this 

 trouble should be remedied, provided it 

 is recognized by the warring nations. 



When the war broke out many small 

 druggists in this country attempted to 

 corner the market on certain crude drugs 

 which they thought would become scarce 

 as the war progressed. The wholesale 

 dealers, however, put a stop to this by 

 refusing to fill their order for more than 

 the usual amount. So many a bright 

 hope of a nice little fortune, out of the 

 restriction of imports due to the war, was 

 blasted. There is a chance, of course, 

 of the aniline dyes maintaining their 

 present high price, in which case, manu- 

 facturers of textiles will probably return 

 to the old method of making dyes from 

 natural products, such as logwood, mad- 

 der. Chemicals for use in the manufac- 

 ture of steel are scarce and those on hand 

 will probably command high prices. 

 Crude rubber has gone up, but I believe 

 that is only temporary until commerce 

 opens up with Brazil. In that connection 

 I notice that the Brazilian line of steam- 

 ships trading with Europe as well as 

 America have decided to place all their 

 ships in service with the United States. 

 This will aid to bring the crude drugs of 



South America to New York and meet 

 the then urgent demand. When the 

 Registry Bill is passed, great relief 

 should be felt along all the lines of im- 

 port and export. 



It is difficult to look far into the econ- 

 omic future. A war, whose cost draws 

 large sums of capital and many millions 

 of the most skilled laborers from profi- 

 table industries and turns their efforts 

 to the destruction of property, is bound 

 to have a lasting bad effect on those 

 countries involved. When peace is 

 finally declared it will take an almost 

 equally great amount of money to repair 

 the ravages of war and such destructive 

 war with the most deadly of weapons 

 the French field guns, not seen or seeing 

 the enemy but dealing death by the thou- 

 sands ! The war will doubtless exert 

 a long and tense influence on the 

 economic conditions of Europe. The 

 effect on the United States will probably 

 be quite the opposite. We are not se- 

 riously entangled in the financial troubles 

 of Europe as the closing of the Exchange 

 or the recourse to emergency banknote 

 issue might tend to show. One thing is 

 certain, we must depend on our own 

 capital after the war, and we have 

 already been several months preparing 

 our finances to do without foreign assist- 

 ance. I think the Exchange need not 

 have closed because it seems more than 

 likely that American investors would 

 have supported it sufficiently when quo- 

 tations dropped so suddenly. Possibly 

 our financial strength will be most greatly 

 felt in our position in international grain 

 trade. We could, no doubt, control to a 

 great extent the grain of the world. Eng- 

 land realized this when she secured all 

 our available surplus when she declared 



