MONOPOLY OF EXCHANGE. 423 



mortgage and 3,000,000 men were thrown out of employ- 

 ment. The "honest dollar'* was asserting its power. 



The banks were " controlling wages by controlling the 

 money. " The number of bankruptcies had increased 

 from 632 in 1866, with liabilities or losses of $47,333,000, 

 to 10,478 in 1878 with losses amounting to $234,383,132. 

 ' ' The sorest distress was everywhere among small traders, 

 debtors and laborers." 



Had it not been for the enormous crops of that year 

 the people might have been bankrupted; but Heaven 

 blessed the producers with an abundance and the heaviest 

 burden fell upon the wage-workers thrown out of employ- 

 ment Note the subjoined table showing the fall of prices 

 from 1866 to 1887, in New York city: 



ARTICLE. 1866. 1877. 



Cotton, .......... 51^ 12 ]& 



Wheat, ....... ... 187^ 147 



Corn, . . . ...... 1 . 95^ 59 



Hams, ........... 



Sugar, .......... 



Who bears the burdens of these falling prices? The 

 agents of Shylock will say, "what a man has to buy is so 

 much cheaper that it makes things equal;" but what a man 

 has to buy some other man (or woman or child) has to 

 make or produce, for they are producers likewise. Cheap 

 clothing means cheap work for those who make them as 

 well as cheap cotton and cheap wool for the producers of 

 those articles. Cheap sugar makes low wages on the sugar 

 plantation, and cheap productions is a benefit only to the 

 man who has a surplus of the big "honest dollars " 

 because they represent more property than they did before 

 the currency was contracted and the consequent fall of 

 prices. 



