Year: 1879

than about fifteen per cent. from the
| level of 1860, and that there has been a


material advance since January 1.


What reason has Mr.. Chase, or any


body else, to claim that prices should


be artifcially put back to the level OF
! 1902 Why is that year selected, In


stead of 1857, when the average was


much higherP Why is it selected in


stead of 1S43, when prices were very
much lower than in 1860 or in 1873?


Has it been revealed that the prices


which happened to prevail in the year


before the war were exactly at the


proper and normal levelP The truth is


that the prices of 1860 have often been


taken as a standard, merely because men


were looking for assurance that the cottn-
try had got back to the neighborhood of
specie values; but there is no reason


knoT to the ablest students for be-
lieving that the relations of industry


were more natural, or that prices were
more healthy then than in other years
preceding. There had been a great i'm
flation which eliminated in 1857, and a
great collapse which passed away in
1858, but it is not for any man TO say at
what point prices afterward reached a
natural and proper level"


1t is the idea of Mr.. Chase and his
friends, apparently, that this world and
this country have no business to inn
prove in condition or in development of
industry, Obviously, if the world does
grow at all, it should cost less of human
labor to buy things now, and therefore
less of any money which fairly corre-
spends in buying power with human
labor, than it cost twenty years ago.
Labor-saving machinery has been vast
ly multiplied and improved. Enormous
tracts of fertile land, previously un-
touched, have been reduced to cultiva-
ton. Millions of slaves or serfs have
been emancipated, here or in Russia,
and have proved that the free man can
produce at lower cost than the slave.
Railroads by the hundred thousand
miles have been built, vastly reducing
the cost of moving products from the
distant producer to the consumer. All
these things have necessarily changed
prices very much. The tendency of
them all-the tendency of all impor-
tant and enduring improvements in the
condition of mankind-has been to low
er prices in this country and to lessen
the number of days labor needed to
procure a certain supply of wants.
Are we to say that this change alone
does not warrant a decrease of six or
seven per cent. in pricesp


But if prices are too low now, what
sense is there in robbing each other in
order to make them higherP The the
ories of Mr.. Chase, reduced to their
simplest terms, involve a great wrong
to all consumers and to all creditors in
this country. They mean that the
workman shall have to pay more for
his food and clothing, and shall lose
part of the value of mis- money depos-
tied in q savings bank. They mean
that the greatimprovement in industry,
which specie resumption has brought,
shall be reversed, and that trade and
commerce shall be put back to the con-
dition of uncertainty and stagnation
which existed so long, and filled the
land with the cries of the unemployed.
A natural and just arrangement of
prices will come-has nearly come al
ready, we believe-through the ex-
change of goods and of gold between
this and other countries. The specie
comes, because this country can pro-
duce at lower rate than other countries,
and will cease to come whenever prices
have been restored to a natural level.
That sort of adjustment is in progress
every day, and will probably be COM
pleted long before Mr.. Chase could get
to Congress TO offer a bill about it.
Why should we meddle with the ar
which wiser laws than any
of human origin are making for US
N. Y. Tribune.