28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The course of events, nevertheless, warrants mankind in ex- 

 pecting that the progress which has been made in recent years 

 in diminishing the necessity for long hours of labor will be con- 

 tinued ; but such progress will be permanent and productive of 

 the highest good only so far as it is determined by natural agen- 

 cies. " If the attempt is made to save the time of the masses by 

 radical and artificial methods, leisure will become license ; but, 

 if they can be taught to save their own time, leisure, as already 

 pointed out, will be opportunity/^ 



Probably the most signal feature of the recent economic tran- 

 sitions has been the extensive decline in the prices of most com- 

 modities ; and as great material interests have been for a time 

 thereby injuriously affected — commodities at reduced valuation 

 not paying the same amount of debt as before — the drift of 

 popular sentiment seems to be to the effect that such a result 

 has been in the nature of a calamity. Accordingly, a great 

 variety of propositions and devices have been brought forward 

 in recent years, and largely occupied the attention of the public 

 in all civilized countries, which, in reality, have had for their 

 object not merely the arrest of this decline, but even the restora- 

 tion of prices to something like their former level ; and in such 

 a category the attempt to regulate artificially the relative values 

 of the precious metals, the increasing restrictions on the free- 

 dom of exchanges, the stimulation of trade by bounties, the for- 

 mation of " trusts," " syndicates," trade and labor organizations, 

 and the like, may all be properly classed. But all such attempts, 

 as Dr. Barth, of Berlin, has expressed it, " are nothing more 

 than designs to lengthen the cloth by shortening the yard-stick." 

 Decline and instability in prices, if occasioned by temporary and 

 artificial agencies, are to be deprecated ; but a decline in prices 

 caused by greater economy and effectiveness in manufacture, 

 and greater skill and economy in distribution, in place of being 

 a calamity is a benefit to all, and a certain proof of an advance 

 in civilization. The mere fact that the general fall of prices 

 which has occurred has been attended with an almost simulta- 

 neous and universal increase in the consumption of the neces- 

 saries of life and other commodities, is conclusive not only of a 

 great improvement in the condition of the masses, but also that 

 all attempts to retard or reverse this movement by govern- 

 mental interference or individual organizations, are the worst 

 possible economic policy. In Great Britain alone the decline in 

 the price of meats and cereals between 1872 and 1886 is esti- 

 mated to have resulted in producing an annual saving to each 

 artisan consumer of $1.95 per head in meat and $3.75 per head in 

 wheat, or an aggregate on 35,000,000 consumers of $143,500,000 

 per annum. At the same time, and very curiously, investiga- 



