XII. The Fall in Prices during the past Twenty Years. 



By A. W. Flux, M.A. 

 Received and read March 9th, 7897. 



The question of how great the fall in wholesale prices 

 during twenty years past has been, is one that has received 

 several answers from persons of undoubtedly extensive 

 knowledge and capacity to form reliable estimates of the 

 movement. It will be not without interest to compare 

 these estimates with each other, and thus see how far 

 they are in agreement. This has been done several times 

 already; but the following comparison offers, the writer 

 believes, some points that are both new and interesting. 

 It is not proposed to deal with any estimates of the move- 

 ments of prices outside our own country, and, of the 

 different estimates for the British movements of prices, 

 those of Sir Rawson Rawson, of Mr. Sauerbeck, and two 

 estimates afforded by the Economist will be compared. 



The comparisons will be made so that the rise and fall 

 of prices shall be expressed as percentages on the average 

 prices of 1886. Some results given in the U. S. Senate 

 Report on Wholesale Prices and Wages in 1893 permitted of 

 a comparison of the effects of selecting different dates as 

 starting points with index numbers calculated on the same 

 basis. In that report all results were reduced to a com- 

 parison with i860. I need not here refer in further detail 

 to these results, merely referring to them as a means of 

 testing further than is done here the effect of the change 



May 20th, 7897. 



