THE ECONOMIC DISTURBANCES SINCE 1873. 15 



much less, actual labor in 1886-'87 having produced 6,513,000 bales of 

 cotton in the United States than was required in 1860 to produce 

 3,800,000 bales ; * while in the case of iron the same amount of labor 

 will produce in 1887 more than double the quantity, in the more valu- 

 able form of steel, than it could have produced in 1886. In short, if 

 the debtor has got more to pay, he has more to pay with. 



Again, it is a popular idea that the steadily increasing supply to 

 the markets of the world during recent years of wheat, the product of 

 low-priced labor from India — sei'iously affecting, through its competi- 

 tion, the prices and profits alike of the agriculturists of the United 

 States and of Europe — has been in some way occasioned by the change 

 in the relative values or purchasing powers of gold and silver, conse- 

 quent on the " demonetization " of the latter metal — although no one 

 as yet has been able to trace with any degree of clearness any connec- 

 tion between the two facts — and that an imperative necessity exists 

 for some speedy and international remedial legislation. To all enter- 

 taining this idea, the following summary of evidence, brought out by 

 the British Gold and Silver Commission in the course of their investi- 

 gations prosecuted during the present year (1887), is especially worthy 

 of attention : f 



Thei'e was practically no trade or movement in wheat between 

 Europe and India until two or three years after the opening of the 

 Suez Canal, or until about 1873 ; in which year exportations were fur- 

 ther encouraged by the removal of an Indian export duty on wheat of 

 about 6 per cent. In June, 1881, and June, 1886, the prices of Cawn- 

 pore wheat at Calcutta were at the same level, namely, 2*9 rupees per 

 maund. The cost of Indian wheat in London in 1881 was 42s. a quar- 

 ter, and 31s. 6c?. in 1886, or 10s. Qd. difference. In 1881 the rate of 

 freight on wheat from India to London was 60s. per ton, and in 1886 

 30s., a difference of 30s. per ton, or Qs. Qd. per quarter. The decline 

 in freights, therefore, accounts for Gs. Gd. out of the 10s. Gd. per quarter 



* The increase in the cotton product of the United States since 1860 has been due 

 mainly to the increased use of fertilizers, better tillage, better conditions for the employ- 

 ment of labor. In the Brazos alluvial region of Texas, which ranks among the first of 

 cotton-producing regions, the relative increase in cotton product and population between 

 1870 and 1880, according to the United States census, was 18 to 1. In what is termed the 

 "oak-upland" regions of North Carolina, the product of cotton in 1880 had increased 

 over that of 1870 in the ratio of 4'5 to 1, or this region in 1880 produced more cotton 

 than the product of the entire State in either 1870 or I860. "This remarkable result," 

 according to the special United States census report on cotton for 1880, "was due mainly 

 to the introduction and general use of commercial fertilizers, which not only increase the 

 crop, but hasten its maturity from two to three weeks, and so bring into the cotton belt a 

 strip of plateau country whose elevation, of from 800 to 1,200 feet, had placed it just 

 beyond the climatic range of the cotton-plant. This change is in no respect due to altered 

 relations of labor." 



f See "First Report of the British Commission " — evidence of Henry Waterfield, 

 C. B., Financial Secretary of the India Office, and representing the Government of India, 

 pp. 125, 126. 



