244 ELLIS H. ROBERTS 



more than the Imperial German bank, nearly three times more 

 than Austria-Hungary; 62.1 per cent more than Russia, and 

 32.6 per cent more than France. 



This plethora of the precious metal in our country pre- 

 sents three problems interesting and important. What is 

 to be the effect on our currency? What on prices and wages? 

 What on our world relations? Paths may be opened for our 

 investigation if we look back to the decade following the 

 discovery of gold in California and study the conditions from 

 1850 to 1860. In that period our country produced gold 

 of the coinage value of $550,000,000, an average of $55,- 

 000,000 a year. With population ranging from 23,000,000 

 to 31,000,000, activity marked all branches of industry. In 

 the census years the value of manufactures produced ran up 

 from $1,019,106,616 to $1,885,861,676— an increase in ten 

 years of $766,755,060. In the decade our national wealth 

 increased by $9,023,836,000. Imports of merchandise grew 

 from $173,509,526 to $353,616,119, more than double; from 

 $7.48 per capita to $11.25; and exports from $144,375,726 to 

 $333,576,057, again more than double, and from $6.23 to 

 $10.61 per capita. The money in circulation increased from 

 $330,256,605 to $435,407,252, and from $12.02 per capita to 

 $13.85. Of this, bank notes were in 1850, $131,366,520 and 

 in 1860, $207,102,477, and specie at the two periods, $154,- 

 000,000 and $235,000,000. Prices of food and clothing ad- 

 vanced, and up to 1855 a general increase occurred of 11 per 

 cent, but in the sum of articles chosen for index, there was 

 a fall of 2.3 per cent before 1860. Pig iron, a typical product, 

 went from $20.88 in 1850 to $22.75 in 1860. In Great Britain 

 from the decade 1848-1857 to 1858-1867, there was an advance 

 in index prices from 89 to 99. 



The panic of 1857 befell in that decade. Howell Cobb, 

 secretary of the treasury, pronounced ''the undue expansion 

 of credit, which engendered schemes of improvident specula- 

 tion, leading to rapid fluctuations in prices and habits of 

 extravagance, the principal cause for the embarrassments 

 in the commerce of the country." Others vehemently 

 attributed the disastrous revulsion to the change in the tariff 

 made by the act of March 3, 1857, reducing rates by twenty 



