Deckmbeb 4, 1896.] 



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Eelations lietween wages, prices, costs and quantity. 

 {Prom The Iron Age.] 



mencement of the existing crisis, costs have 

 been on the average, in the copper produ- 

 cing industry, steadily and rapidly dimin- 

 ished by the use of rock drills and high ex- 

 plosives, as well as by diminishing costs of 

 transportation and handling. The reduced 

 costs have permitted reduced prices, which, 

 in turn, have stimulated demand. The 

 enormous quantity of free capital now ex- 

 isting has permitted immediate response to 

 the demand and corresponding increase of 

 supply. And thus, in consequence of the 

 greater influence of invention and improve- 

 ments in the arts, and especially of the in- 

 crease of the amount of available capital in 

 these later years, we see what may be 



termed a reversal of the customary state- 

 ment of the law of supply and demand, and 

 ' increasing demand produces decreased 

 prices.' 



Commenting upon these figures, Tlie Iron 

 Age says : 



"We need hardly add that these bald figures, 

 eloquent though they be, do not tell the whole tale 

 of the wonderful improvement in the condition of 

 the workingman, when instituting a comparison be- 

 tween the days before the war and those of the last 

 decades. Only he who knows the life of a young 

 mining location in the woods, and of the condition 

 of the communities of the Lake copper region at the 

 present day, can grasp all its significance." 



Invention, discovery and general im- 

 provement in all the useful arts now con- 



