4 BULLETIN 99£ ? U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
As is usual in such violent adjustment, the drop began slowly, 
increased in rapidity, then dropped more gradually, and apparently 
has now (June, 1921) about completed the violent drop. Judging by 
the Civil War experience and by the slow rate of recession now, some 
price recovery is to be expected in the near future. This does not 
mean that all prices will rise. When more products rise in price 
than fall, the general price level will rise, but many products will 
be going down. It is to be expected that those that have dropped 
excessively will rise, and that prices of most things that are much 
above the general price level, will fall. 
Another characteristic of prices during a period of rapid change 
in the general price level is the violence of fluctuation. In normal 
times the prices of each individual farm product usually fluctuate 
INDEX NUMBERS Or WHOLESALE FRIGES 
CIVIL WAR AND WORLD WAR 
CIVIL WAR ie56-l860 = 100 WORLD WAR AUG-IS09-JULY 1914=100 
250 
200 
150 
-• 
*A\ 
- 
250 
200 
150 
-100 
'V 
- 
1 
/ 
\ 
A/v 
\ 
<J'\ 
**V -J 
£ 
-mn-f* 
V 
f 
"v- 
— '"X 
'"—•«, 
•"«•. 
°^ 
•"><►. 
5 
£ 
"^ir 
1861 1662 1663 1864- 1865 ie66 1667 
1914 1915 ISI6 1917 1918 1919 1920 
1868 
1921 
1869 
1870 1871 1872 1873 ie74 I875 1876 1877 1878 
Fig. 2. — Wholesale prices in the United. States, by quarterly periods, showing the violent drop and partial 
recovery after the Civil War and the more violent drop after the World War. 
about the general price level. In periods like the present there is 
more than the usual uncertainty as to supply and demand, and an 
even greater disturbing factor is the shifting of the general price level 
about which individual prices fluctuate. Figures 6 to 11 and 13 show 
that sudden and violent changes in prices occur very frequently when 
the general price level is unstable. 
During each of the periods of rapidly rising prices, as from 1899 to 
1912, the cost of living has been widely discussed, largely because 
wages have tended to lag behind prices and salaries and incomes from 
investments have changed even more slowly. 
When prices fall very rapidly farmers and others who go in debt 
to produce articles to sell find the payment of debts to be increasingly 
difficult. At each period of rapidly falling prices the money question 
has been generally discussed. 
