130 



[August, 1912. 



ling fellowships to enable teachers and 

 other suitable persons to study agricul- 

 ture abroad." Thanks to the 



ASSOCIATION FOR THE INTERNATIONAL 

 INTERCHANGE OP STUDENTS, 



the idea of travelling scholarships has be- 

 come a fact, at least on an experimental 

 basis, and it only remains now for the 

 Government, or the public— better still 

 the Government and the public— to sub- 

 scribe liberally to a fund to (1) Pound 

 lectureships in tropical agriculture on 

 this side ; (2) to grant travelling scholar- 

 ships for students and others attending 

 such lectures, or institutions like Kew, 

 the Imperial College of Science at South 

 Kensington, &c, in direct touch with 

 the Tropics ; {3) and, most important of 

 all, to establish a fund for erecting and 

 endowing two 



AGRICULTURAL COLLEGES IN THE TROPICS, 



the first to be erected in Ceylon, the 

 second in Trinidad, or elsewhere in the 

 West Indies. 



" It must be borne in mind that money 

 for educational purposes is always diffi- 

 cult to obtain," Dr. Shipley went on to 

 say, " and this difficulty is increased by 

 the crying need of existing institutions." 



This is a truism that ought not to be. 

 Let us hope that with many other 

 grievances and hardships that modern 

 legislation has improved out of existence, 

 such a cry will also become a thing of 

 the past. A nation, the same as family, 

 that cannot— worse still, that will not— 

 give money to set up its young folks 

 and give them (especially the deserving 

 ones) a start in life does not deserve to 

 prosper, and will not do s o permanently. 

 England, therfore, must not allow it to 

 be said that her children cried out for 

 an Imperial Education and were refused 

 on account of the cost. — Tropical Life, 

 May, 1912. 



THE PROBLEM OP INCREASED 

 PRICES. 



The year 1911 witnessed a revolt on the 

 part of consumers not only in America 

 but on the continent due to the rise in 

 the price of commodities. 



With a view, if possible, to arrest the 

 tendency of such a rise and suppress the 

 cause, Prof. Bauer of Bale and Prof. 

 Irving of Yale consider an international 

 enquiry into the cost of living necessary, 

 with a view, if possible, of counteracting 

 those forces which tend to high prices. 



It would appear that since 1895 there 

 has been a general and steady rise in 

 prices, and as a result there has been also 

 an increase in the price of land, the rate 

 of interest, rents of buildings, wages for 

 labour, &c 



The search for the cause of this state 

 of affairs is not only a difficult proceed- 

 ing but yields the most conflicting 

 results. If the question is put— what is 

 the cause of the hip h prices in different 

 countries ?— we shall find that in the 

 United States it will be attributed to 

 trusts, in Germany to protection, in 

 Paris and Vienna to the altered state of 

 living, among agricultural labourers to 

 weather conditions, among small traders 

 to speculation, among stock-breeders to 

 the middlemen, among small employers 

 to strikes, among large contractors to 

 the social laws, and so on. 



Economists of great repute are inclined 

 to attribute the rise in prices to the 

 depreciation of gold as a result of its 

 increased production — almost five-fold 

 within the past 25 years. 



Assuming that an international en- 

 quiry confirmed the opinion of the depre- 

 ciation of the standard unit of value, 

 what means would it give to those who 

 desire to combat the reduction of the 

 purchasing power of money ? Mr. Ir ving 

 Fischer proposes an international con- 

 vention to render this purchasing power 

 stable. The means by which this is to 

 be effected, as proposed by Mr. Fischer, 

 may not meet with general approval, 

 and indeed it is only put forward as a 

 suggestion ; but there is practical unani- 

 mity as to the advisability of instituting 

 an international enquiry into the whole 

 matter — an enquiry which is bound to 

 show certain fundamental deficiencies 

 and defects in economic law which there 

 is great hope of remedying by co-oper- 

 ation among the greatest statisticians of 

 the day. — (Summarised from the Bulletin 

 of the Bureau of Economic and Social 

 Intelligence. 



