The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1896-08-06
PALACES CONCERNING RISE
AND FALL OF PRICES.


ratio Of 1o to I, claim that prices
of all commodities have sustain
! ed all "unexampled and ruinous
fall," beginning with the year
1873, and that the cause of the
decline of such prices is wholly
due to the fact that i'll 1873 law
was passed by the congress of the
United States which dropped the
coinage of the legal tender silver
dollar, of which up to that time,
had been coined, all told, about
eight millions of dollars, none
of which had ever gone into cir
culation as money in the ordinary
channels of trade. They further
claim that to resume the free
coinage of the silver dollar and
give it unlimited legal tender
qualities at the ratio of I6 to I,
would cure all the ills of human
ity and cause the prices of COM
rnodities to advance to the old
time high place, and would also
advance the price of silver bull
lion to the coinage value at the
ratio of I6 to I.
Careful consideration of this
matter, however, will convince
the most skeptical that the act
referred to had nothing whatever
to do with the rise and fall of
prices. The fundamental trouble
with the army of free silver adj
vocates, is that they take the year
1873 as the time from which every
thing is reckoned. To them all
time prior to that is Insignificant
and all prior history is efaced and
held for naught.
It's a fact, as abundantly shown
by statistics of prices, that the
decline in the price of comnodi-
ties for a period of rs years from
1913 to 1S43 was very similar
and nearly exactly the same as
since 1873, and that the year 1913
was not the beginning of a fall
in prices, but such prices had
been gradually falling for several
years prior thereto; SO that COM
pared with the period of 1873 the
latter was not the beginning of a
fall in prices which we have wit
messed since that time, but the
decline began about the.year 1865
at the close of the civil war. And
those prices, which had been in
f1ated by causes brought on by
the war, began to decline at the
close of the war when the causes
which made the rise ceased to
exist, and the ratio of supply and
demand became differently ad-
justed. For like reasons those
prices have continued to decline.
to the present day. The omis-
sion to continue the coinage of
the silver dollar, which had never
been used in the trade or business
of the country, was not i'll any
sense the cause of the declining
prices.
Under the Bland act of 1873
there were coined four hundred
and thirty millions of legal ten
der silver dollars which are now
in circulation so far as the people
will have them, yet this immense
coinage of silver did not in any
parti cular check the fall in prices
nor assist the rise in the price of
silver, but the decline in prices
continued the same as had been
the case since 1865.
The varying value of money as
related to goods, between 1880
and 1909, fell in the ratio of 100
to 54, or 46 per cent; that is, the
average price of commodities rose
enormously during those years.
From 1909 to 1849 the value of
money again rose in the extraor-
dinary ratio of 100 to 24o, or by
40 per cent; that is, there was
an extraordinary fall in prices dur
ing that time, which, in extent,
greatly exceeds the fall in prices
since 1873. The fall in prices
prior to 1873, was during the time
that silver men are pleased to call
the bi-metalic period.
/ The long period of fifty six
years from 1909 to 1865 was no.
ted, first by a tremendous fall fol-
lowed by great rise in prices,
though the price of silver varied
but little during that time. Thus
it is never stated by the advo-
Gates of free silver that during
that long period when silver had
"free access to the 1nints'' it cut
no figure in preventing the fall OF
commodities or in preventing
their rise. 1t seemed then to have
none of the qualities now ascrib-
ed to it.
That the act of 1873 had any
thing to do with the decline o1
prices is not borne out by the can.