28 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



The fair-trade statement, if I remember rightly, showed an average 

 fall of 5s. in the price of wheat, comparing the whole period since the 

 repeal of the corn-laws with a long period before. This miay have 

 been right or wrong for the purpose in hand, but for our present pur- 

 pose, which is to compare the present period with that of half a cen- 

 tury ago, it is important to note that it is mainly within the last ten 

 years the steadily low price of wheat has been established. Compar- 

 ing the ten years before 1846 with the last ten years, what we find is 

 that, while the average price of wheat in 1837-'46 was 58s. 7d., it was 

 48s. 9d only in the last ten years — a reduction not of 5s. merely, but 

 10s. The truth is, the repeal of the corn-laws was not followed by 

 an immediate decline of wheat on the average. The failure of the 

 potato-crop, the Crimean War, and the depreciation of gold, all con- 

 tributed to maintain the price, notwithstanding free trade, down to 

 1862. Since then steadily lower prices have ruled ; and when we 

 compare the present time with half a century ago, or any earlier part 

 of the century, these facts should be remembered. 



There is a still more important consideration. Averages are very 

 good for certain purposes, but we all know in this place that a good 

 deal sometimes turns upon the composition of the average — upon 

 whether it is made up of great extremes, or whether the individual 

 elements depart very little from the average. This is specially an 

 important matter in a question of the price of food. The average of 

 a necessary of life over a long period of years may be moderate, but 

 if in some years the actual price is double what it is in other years, 

 the fact of the average will in no way save from starvation at certain 

 periods the workman who may have a difficulty in making both ends 

 meet in the best of times. What we find, then, is that, fifty years 

 ago, the extremes were disastrous compared with what they are at the 

 present time. In 1836 we find wheat touching 36s./ in 1838, 1839, 

 1840, and 1841, we find it touching 78s. 4 J., 81s. 6(?., 72s. lOd, and 

 76s. Id.; in all cases double the price of the lawest year, and nearly 

 double the " average " of the decade ; and in 1847 the price of 102s. 5c?., 

 or three times the price of the lowest ^pei'i^'d, is touched. If we go 

 back earlier we find still more startling eittemes. We have such 

 figures as 106s. M. in 1810 ; 126s. 6<7. iii 1812 ; 109s. M. in 1813, and 

 965. \ld. in 1817 ; these figures being not merely the extremes touched, 

 but the actual averages for the whole year. No doubt in the early 

 part of the century the over-issue of inconvertible paper accounts for 

 part of the nominal prices, but it accounts for a very small part. 

 What we have to consider, then, is, that fifty years ago the working- 

 man with wages, on the average, about half, or not much more than 

 half, what they are now, had at times to contend with a fluctuation in 

 the price of bread which implied sheer starvation. Periodic starva- 

 tion was, in fact, the condition of the masses of working-men through- 

 out the kingdom fifty years ago, and the references to the subject in 



