638 APPENDIX. 



The United States Department of Agriculture has computed, since 1862, the 

 home prices of a number of farm products, which it is interesting to compare 

 with the course of New York prices of farm products, although the products 

 are not identical. The table on page 636 gives the home value per bushel, 

 ton, or pound of ten of these leading crops. The three right hand columns of 

 the table show the ratio of the prices of the combined products in currency, 

 gold, and silver. The currency ratio is obtained by dividing the total value of 

 these products by the total quantity in a certain fixed proportion for eacji of 

 the ten products. From this the gold and silver prices are computed. Diagram 

 XI (page 637) is prepared from the column of gold prices. This proportion, 

 in the form of "quantity units " in the table, is as follows: — 



Corn, 250 bushels; wheat, 125 bushels; oats 3331 bushels; barley, rye, 

 buckwheat, each ]66| bushels; potatoes, 200 bushels; hay, 10 tons; cotton, 

 1,000 pounds; tobacco, 1,250 pounds. 



These quantities were chosen because, at the average values of these pro- 

 ducts for the past thirty years, the same amount of money would purchase each 

 of the products in the proportion given. Por example, two bushels of corn are 

 found to be equivalent to one bushel of wheat, and two" bushels of barley, rye, 

 or buckwheat to one of oats, etc. 



The ratio of prices is computed by dividing, in each year the total value of 

 the products by the number of quantity units computed as above, and the 

 numbers are not, therefore, percentages of the prices in a selected year. They 

 show the course of prices, but are not otherwise comparable with the preceding 

 tables. 



All the above tables and diagrams except Diagram VIII. refer to the United 

 States. It would be interesting to make an exact comparison with prices of the 

 same commodities during the same period, in Europe. There are, however, no 

 data for this. The commodities in the Sauerbeck, Economist and Soetbeer 

 tables do not coincide with those in the Aldrich tables, the periods covered are 

 not altogether the same, and the years taken as the base lines for comparison 

 differ. This last difficulty was met by the statistician of the Aldrich Committee, 

 by transposing the figures of the foreign tables so as to make the year 1860 the 

 basis of comparison, as in the United States. In constructing the diagrams 

 the figures of the transposed tables have been used, but for convenience of 

 reference the tables themselves give both the original and the transposed figures. 

 The original figures of all these tables are of course those usually quoted. In 

 all these European tables the index numbers are obtained by dividing the 

 table of prices by the number of articles, thus giving to each article the same 

 weight, whether of every day use in great quantity, like wheat, or of compara- 

 tively small importance like indigo. In this, also, as already explained, they 

 differ from the Aldrich tables which are prepared in such a form as to give 

 to each article its relative importance in family purchases. The Aldrich 

 tables of wages are also "weighted " by giving the wages paid in each industry 

 a relative importance in accordance with the number of persons employed 

 in it. 



