POPULAR S C I E N C,^?gc?7 

 MONTHLY. 



NOVEMBER, 1887. 



I 



THE ECONOMIC DISTUKBAKCES SINCE 18Y3. 



By Hon. DAVID A. WELLS, LL. D., D. C. L. 

 V. 



N the preceding paper of this series (No. IV), evidence was sub- 

 mitted to the effect that the remarkable decline in prices which 

 has occurred during the last ten or fifteen years — or since 1873 — in the 

 case of the various commodities which constitute the great bulk of the 

 trade, commerce, and consumption of the world, has been so largely 

 due to conditions affecting their supply and demand that, if any or 

 all other causes whatever have contributed to such a result, the influ- 

 ence exerted has not been appreciable ; and, further, that if the prices 

 of all other commodities, not included in such analysis, had confess- 

 edly been influenced by a scarcity of gold, the claims preferred by the 

 advocates of the latter theory could not be fairly entitled to any more 

 favorable verdict than that of " not proven." But have commodities, 

 other than those whose production and price-experience have been 

 submitted — more especially such commodities as have not in recent 

 years experienced any marked change in their conditions of supply 

 and demand — exhibited in their recent price-movements any evidence 

 of having been subjected to any influences attributable to the scarcity 

 of gold ? The answer is, that not only can no results capable of any 

 such generalization be afiirmed, but no one commodity can even be 

 named, in respect to which there is conclusive evidence that its price 

 has been affected in recent years by influences directly or mainly 

 attributable to any scarcity of gold for the purpose of effecting ex- 

 changes. 



In the first place, all that large class of products or serrices, which 

 are exclusively or largely the result of handicrafts ; which are not ca- 

 pable of rapid multiplication, or of increased economy in production, 

 and which can not be made the subject of international competition, 



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