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kind is a little more frequently used, and so in Portugal; and when we reach France, we find modern paper money and a great increase of failures. Now, we have no doubt that failures among business men occur in the long run very much in accordance with this comparative statement, taking it as a whole; but to charge it to paper currency is contrary to fact, and simply absurd.

In California, and also in Australia, where they not only have a specie currency, but produce specie as an article of commerce, there are more failures and a more rapid and extreme fluctuation in the prices of goods than in any other part of the world. In France, and before the establishment of their present bank, which Mr. Walker views with such an unfriendly eye, there were instances of the wildest, the most senseless speculation that ever occurred; during which the number of failures and bankruptcies exceeded greatly anything that took place with us even in 1837. The crisis of last year was felt with more intensity in Hamburg and other parts of Northern Europe, where they have no paper currency like ours, than it was with us. Failures were more rapid, and the panic more sudden, complete, and all-pervading than even in New York. And there is still another fact bearing pertinently upon this point. There is more banking capital and paper money in New England, and, according to Mr. Walker's criterion, of less value, than in any other portion of the United States, and yet last year the failures were fewer in proportion, and, with one or two exceptions, less disastrous, than elsewhere.

The true cause of mercantile failures lies much deeper in our system than paper money. It is to be found in the characters of our race. The Anglo-Saxons are the pioneers of modern civilization and improvement. They are adventurous, enterprising, and far-seeing. There is no spot on the face of the earth, however remote or difficult of access, they will not visit, provided it promises to put money into their purse. This adventurous spirit characterizes them at home as well as abroad. We conquer countries; lay out, people, and improve States; cut down forests; cultivate farms; open mines; construct railways and erect factories, with a rapidity unknown and incomprehensible to the old countries. Cincinnati, of forty years' growth, contains more inhabitants than Madrid, the largest city of Spain. Wherever such rapid improvement exists, and such extraordinary enterprise prevails, there will be much of rash adventure, failure, and vicissitude. Such results are natural, and no more depend upon paper money than the difference of character and temperament existing between our own people and those of Catholic Spain and France depend upon, or grow out of, paper money. The next point we wish to consider relates to the effect of paper money on prices, and it is found in an article from Mr. Walker, published in the September number of this Magazine for 1857. He assumes that paper money inflates the prices of all articles, and also the prices of wages, but not the latter so much as the former, and consequently the laborer is especially injured by a mixed currency, and that this injury has been felt with peculiar force in the United States by the working of our currency system.

One of the most difficult problems in political economy is that of determining the causes of the variations in the prices both of labor and of property. So far as the price of labor is concerned, the question is a very different one with us from what it is in Europe; and it is a very dif

ferent one now in Great Britain from what it was a century, or even half a century, ago. With us labor is an independent power; formerly in Europe it was a machine. It was treated as such in fact, and in the theories of political economy. It had but little more voice in the compensation it was to receive than the steam engine had in regard to the amount of fuel which should be used in running it. Generally it was for the interest of the owner of the engine to expend upon it fuel enough to develop its full power; so it was for the interest of the capitalists to pay their labor sufficient at least to sustain its bodily strength. In this country labor is a power, in a measure independent and self-controlling. It meets capital and negotiates with it on common ground. If the price offered is not satisfactory, it has an alternative in our vast and almost exhaustless public domain. In considering this question we shall have more regard to facts than to the theories laid down in books.

The question recurs, then, what regulates the price of labor in this country? Our answer is a general and comprehensive one-it is regulated by the results of labor itself, as developed in the multiplied forms of production. Labor produces wealth; increases the number of laborsaving machines; settles and improves States; constructs railways; every new and substantial improvement made has its influence, not only on the condition of the laborer, but on the price of his wages.

In our country, wages of laboring people of nearly every grade and all classes have about doubled within thirty years. In England, Scotland, and Ireland, among some classes, prices have risen very much; this is true also on the continent.

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Price of property is regulated primarily by its cost in labor and capital, and secondly by supply and demand. Its money price is regulated by the amount of money in the community, and the facility and extent of credits-paper money being a part of this credit. Beyond this there are a variety of operating causes, some more and some less direct. inventions in machinery, increased facilities for transportation, improved skill in labor, all have their effect in modifying the elementary principles that regulate prices. For instance, a man to-day may produce an article by improved machinery at less than half the cost three months before, and without increasing the capital employed.

We proceed to examine Mr. Walker's proposition as it regards our country. He says our mixed currency inflates prices to the injury of the laborer. This he regards as true in theory and in fact, giving various statistics in proof. In commenting upon his statistics he comes to the conclusion that he has "ascertained and established the law" on this subject; and adds, "at the present moment (1857) the currency is greatly expanded, and nominal wages are high," but commodities are "much higher." Universal complaint is heard of "hard times," and with good reason, from the laboring classes, though they have the highest of wages and plenty of employment.

Such assertions as these we expect to hear from unprincipled demogogues, who array themselves against wealth and respectability wherever they meet them, and who make it a part of their duty to do all they can to intensify the jealousy and prejudice which unfortunately too often exist between the laborer and the capitalist, but we did not expect to hear them from Mr. Walker. Such carelessness of statement is absolutely inexcusable in him -a man of his standing, character, and intelligence. Now, let us exam

ine his statistics. He says he has "taken pains to ascertain the cost in Boston of ten different articles which laborers are supposed to want, at three different periods, and the rate of wages for common laborers at the same time." These articles are flour, sugar, molasses, pork, coffee, rice, corn meal, rye meal, butter, and cheese. The different times referred to are 1836, 1840, and 1843. The wages are given at the first period at $1 25 a day; at the other two at $1 each. These statistics have a partisan look. We can scarcely fail of coming to the conclusion that they were selected more for the purpose of argument than for the establishment of correct principles. Why specify a year in which the people were literally crazy, given up to the wildest speculative mania that ever existed in this country, and then the two years when the reaction was most intensely felt, to establish a general principle? In 1836 we imported flour, and it was sold at Chicago at $22 a barrel, and the very articles named, taking them together, were higher than they had been at any time for twenty years before, or than they have been since. In 1840 and 1843, the same articles were lower than they had been for twenty years prior, or than they have been since. Mr. Walker had the statistics bearing upon the subject, or could have procured them very easily, for a period of twenty-five or thirty consecutive years, and why he did not avail himself of them to establish his argument we cannot understand, unless it is that they would have utterly disproved it.

The position I assume in regard to prices of labor and the great leading articles of commerce or of consumption in this country is this—that the price of labor, taking it in its broadest aspect, has doubled within the last thirty years; and that the price of all the great leading articles of consumption, such as cotton, woolen, and linen goods, have fallen from a nominal per cent to 50 per cent; hardware, taking all articles made out of the metals, (gold and silver excepted,) have also in the main materially fallen in price; boots and shoes have fluctuated very much during the period-the result, all things considered, has been a slight increase in price; groceries have also fluctuated, but the general result has been a decline; food has also varied; breadstuffs have risen a little in the main, and but a little; meats of all kinds, and the products of the dairy, have doubled in price.

We propose to classify and consider these different kinds of articles somewhat in detail, Butcher's meat, including poultry, and the products of the dairy, have undoubtedly doubled in price within the period under consideration. In referring to butcher's meat, we mean as sold in markets fresh. We do not include mess pork, nor mess beef by the barrel; and when we say the products of the dairy, we mean butter and cheese. Has this great change in price been caused by our mixed currency? A few pertinent facts will aid us in answering this question. In citing them we shall not imitate Mr. Walker by selecting exceptional cases, and ignoring all others. We take them as a whole, so far as they have come under our observation.

The stock furnishing food and the grain in the United States in 1840 and in 1850 to each inhabitant, as shown by the censuses of the respective periods, are as follows:

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It will be seen from 1840 to 1850 there was a diminution in the United States to each inhabitant, of neat cattle, of about one-tenth; of sheep and swine, of about one-sixth; of bushels of rye, wheat, buckwheat, and barley, of about one-sixth; and an increase of corn of about one-eighth. There are the best of reasons for believing that this variation has been going on at even a greater ratio since 1850. Such State statistics as we have been able to procure confirm it. But take the facts as they stand, and supposing the ratio has been going on the same since 1850 that it did from 1840 to 1850, and we have the true explanation of the rise in butcher's meat and butter and cheese. It is well known that where the supply of an article is simply equal to the demand at a given or fair price, a slight diminution in supply effects frequently a very consid

erable rise.

Let us look now at the average value of the exports of breadstuffs and of provisions for each five years, from 1822 to 1856, inclusive:—

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We see an increase of our exports in about sixteen years of four fold; during which time there has been a very great decrease in production. These two facts-decrease in production and increase in exportation-afford us a logical and conclusive cause for the increase in the price of meat, butter, and cheese.

There is another fact worthy of notice in this connection, as having an important bearing upon the manufacturing interests of the country. We refer to the agricultural products as compared with the manufacturing products, as shown by the census of 1840 and that of 1850:

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Here is one fact going to show that the manufacturing interest of the country, although it has not been as prosperous as it probably would have been under the tariff of 1842, has, on the whole, gained on agriculture.

We have taken a general view of the subject, as it relates to the prices of butcher's meat and butter and cheese; and we will now take a somewhat local one. In the following statistics we embrace horses and mules, as throwing some light on the rise in the price of horses, and we also include neat cattle and sheep and swine, showing the number in 1840 and also 1850 in New England:

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The aggregate of the former period was 5,383,938; of the latter was 4,200,652, showing a positive decrease from 1840 to 1850 of 1,183,286, while there was a positive increase in the population during the same period of 493,315.

This extraordinary decrease in stock is not confined to New England. The statistics of the great agricultural State of New York show a similar decrease, as will be seen by the following statement:

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The aggregate in 1840 was 9,404,629; in 1850, 6,797,109, showing a decrease of 2,607,520 in number in live stock, when, at the same time, there was a positive increase in population of 668,473.

There were in New York and in New England in 1840, of live stock that furnish meat for consumption, 14,044,364, equal to 3 to each inhabitant; in the same States in 1850 only 10,173,134, equal to 1 to each inhabitant.

It is obvious that almost all the butcher's meat, and the butter and cheese, consumed within the States named, must be by them produced, excepting for a short time in the winter. With this fact in view, the statistics we have cited explain beyond a cavil the cause of the increase in prices. There are other facts to show that these high prices are in a measure local, or confined to New England and the large cities. The following table will serve to prove it, by showing the prices of mess beef and mess pork, and also to prove that there has been for a long period no great rise in the prices of many of the leading articles of groceries :Average price of mess beef...from 1819 to 1858, $10 19; 1848 to 1858, $12 50

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These prices are prepared by David M. Balfour. I find them in a former number of the Magazine, and I believe, from my own investigations, that they are substantially correct.

The fluctuations in breadstuffs, or flour, which may be taken as a fair criterion to judge of them, have been very considerable during the present century; the general price has, however, been quite uniform. The average export price at New York, from 1800 to 1855, inclusive, a period of fifty-six years, was $7 43. The average price from 1850 to 1855, inclusive, was $6 45, showing that the variation, in the main, has been in favor of the purchaser.

In investigating the price of boots and shoes for a period of twentyfive or thirty years, we have found very few kinds, if any, that can rightly be considered representative articles for that period in price and quality. Scarcely any have been made uniformly the same in stock and labor; consequently we are obliged to rely upon the judgment of dealers and manufacturers. The result of the information obtained is this, that in the period under consideration there have been in some kinds, and particularly the coarser and heavier kinds, great fluctuations; the highest prices were in 1836 and 1837, and the lowest early after 1840. Since that period there has been a general rise, attributable entirely to the rise in stock. The finer kinds, and those manufactured for women and children, have risen less in price. Take all kinds in the aggregate, and considering the quality, the consumer gets about as much for his money now, as he did twenty-five or thirty years ago. There has been a general rise in stock, but a cheapening in the cost of manufacturing.

Iron and hardware have, of course, like all articles of commerce, varied

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