RECENT ECONOMIC CHANGES. 587 



keep up high profit-assuring prices, one of Wo things would 

 eventually happen : either new factories would be started ; or the 

 inventive spirit of the age would devise cheaper methods of pro- 

 duction, or some substitute for the product they furnished, and 

 so ruin the first combination beyond the possibility of redemp- 

 tion. And hence we have here another permanent agency, an- 

 tagonistic to the maintenance of high and remunerative prices. 



CUEIOUS CHANGES IN PRICES. 



The record of extreme changes in prices, by reason of circum- 

 stances that are acknowledged to have been purely exceptional, 

 is also most instructive, and removes not a few commodities from 

 the domain of any controverted economic theory respecting mone- 

 tary influences. 



The price of manufactured Mediterranean coral — the trade in 

 which is extensive — has been greatly depressed in recent years by 

 reason of the discovery of new banks of coral on the coast of 

 Sicily, from which the raw material has been obtained most 

 cheaply, and in large excess of demand. The consequent decline 

 in prices has, however, opened new markets in Africa, where the 

 natives now purchase coral ornaments in place of beads of Vene- 

 tian and German manufacture. 



Few commodities have fluctuated more violently in price in 

 recent years, or more strikingly illustrate the degree to which 

 supply and demand predominate over all other agencies in deter- 

 mining price, than the vegetable product hops. In 1881 there was 

 an almost universal crop failure, and the highest grade of English 

 hops (East Kent) commanded 700s. per cwt. In 1886 the German 

 Hop-Growers' Association estimated the quantity grown through- 

 out the world at 93,340 tons, and the annual consumption at only 

 83,200 tons, so that there was an excess of production over con- 

 sumption for that year of nearly 10,000 tons. As might have been 

 expected, there was a notable decline in the world's prices for hops, 

 and the same quality of English hops which commanded 7005. per 

 cwt. in 1882 sold for 74s. in 1887, and in June, 1888, for 68s. Later 

 in the year, with unfavorable harvest reports, the price advanced 

 to 147s. 



DIAMONDS. 



The recent price experience of diamonds is in the highest de- 

 gree interesting. Diamonds were first discovered in South Africa 

 about the year 1868, and a business of searching (mining) for them 

 immediately sprang up. At the outset the mining was conducted 

 by individuals, but, in consequence of the expense, the work grad- 

 ually and necessarily passed into the control of joint-stock com- 

 panies with command of large capital ; and it was not until 1880 

 that operations on a great scale were undertaken. The result of 



