300 PRICES 



fore, reduced to a question about facts. Is it or is it 

 not a fact that rupee prices have risen in India in the 

 last century ? Upon this question I do not concede 

 that the prices at the place of export are sufficient 

 and conclusive evidence. The price of grain at the 

 town of export is the sum of two prices — the local 

 price at which the grain-dealer purchased from the 

 cultivator and the cost of carriage. Since 1873, the 

 year with which comparison is made, the means of 

 transport have been enormously developed, the area 

 from which supplies are drawn has been proportion- 

 ately increased, and the cost of carriage has been 

 much reduced. If the price of grain at the town of 

 export has not been reduced, it can only be because 

 the price paid for it up-country has been increased. 

 That is what the price-lists from the bazaars up- 

 country show to have been the case. From every 

 mart the story is the same : the price of food-grains 

 has moved on to a higher level in the latter half of 

 the nineteenth century. This can easily be demon- 

 strated ocularly by averaging the prices of any one 

 of the food-grains at the various centres for which 

 records are given (at the end of this chapter and in 

 * Prices and Wages '), and projecting them upon a 

 chart. The result will be practically the same as that 

 shown in the price-curves for wheat and for barley 

 at Bareilly. I have not printed such a chart, because 

 for the earlier years of the century the result obtained 

 by averaging the prices of different centres is fal- 

 lacious. The characteristic of the old small markets 

 was instability, indicated by great fluctuations of 

 prices. If the fluctuations are averaged, the high 

 prices of one market are neutralized by the low prices 

 of another, and the result is to show a stability of 

 price which never existed in any one market. The 

 average gives an absolutely false picture of the 

 character of prices in the earlier period. After rail- 

 way communications had been developed, prices were 



