THE INFLUENCE OF CROPS UPON BUSINESS 25 



and an activity of exchange which carried the records of American 

 business of every sort far beyond the highest levels known before. 



The second great movement of advance is that which began in 

 1897, and still continues to-day (1906) after nine fabulous years 

 of prosperity and almost uninterrupted increase. This movement 

 also originated in an extraordinarily remunerative harvest, and its 

 unprecedented duration is doubtless in large measure due to the 

 prolonged continuance of agricultural success. After four years 

 of prolonged depression, during which any revival of business 

 had been prevented by the threat of a revolutionary change in 

 our standard currency, the way was cleared of this hindrance at 

 last in the autumn of 1896 by the overwhelming defeat of the 

 extremist program in the presidential election. To this defeat 

 the agricultural situation of that autumn contributed, as everyone 

 remembers, a decisive influence. The conjunction of a failure of 

 the wheat crop in India with a shortage in Australia served to 

 raise the price of American wheat from 53 cents per bushel in 

 August to 94^ cents at the time of the election in November, 

 upsetting the arguments of those who had advocated the unlim- 

 ited coinage of silver as the only means of raising prices, and 

 turning the electoral tide against them in several of the doubtful 

 Middle Western states. The principal obstacle to recovery being 

 thus removed, in the following year a strikingly favorable turn in 

 agriculture gave the necessary fillip to trade and set the country 

 once more on the highway of prosperity. 



Early in the summer of 1897 it became known that the crops 

 were again a failure in India, Australia, and in the Argentine 

 Republic. Russia had had a poor wheat crop in 1896, and seemed 

 likely to have another in 1897. In France, on account of a scorch- 

 ing drought, the harvest was very deficient. In Austria storms and 

 floods had done great damage. In a word, for one reason or another, 

 the season proved disastrous all over Europe, and the European 

 wheat crop fell short of that of the previous year by some three 

 hundred fifty million bushels, a loss of about one third. The 

 demand for American wheat in consequence assumed new dimen- 

 sions, and the price in August ran considerably above a dollar 

 per bushel, or more than twice the price prevailing at that season 



