have been more or less influential; and among such causes the following are generally regarded as having been especially potential: "Over-production"; "the scarcity and appreciation of gold," or "the depreciation of silver, through its demonetization"; "restrictions of the free course of commerce" through protective tariffs on the one hand, and excessive and unnatural competition occasioned by excessive foreign imports contingent on the absence of "fair" trade or protection on the other; heavy national losses, occasioned by destructive wars, especially the Franco-Prussian War; the continuation of excessive war expenditures; the failure of crops; the unproductiveness of foreign loans or investments; excessive speculation and reaction from great inflations; strikes and interruption of production consequent on trades-unions and other organizations of labor; the concentration of capital in few hands, and a consequent antagonizing influence to the equitable diffusion of wealth; "excessive expenditures for alcoholic beverages," and a "general improvidence of the working-classes." In the investigations undertaken by committees of Congress in the United States, the causes assigned by the various witnesses who testified before them were comprised under no less than one hundred and eighty heads; and an almost equal diversity of opinion was manifested by the witnesses who appeared before the Royal (British) Commission.[1] The special causes to which a majority of the Commission itself attached any great degree of importance, stated in the order presented by them, are as follows: 1. Changes in the distribution of wealth—i.e., in Great Britain; 2. Natural tendency to diminution in the rate of profit consequent on the progressive accumulation of capital; 3. Over-production; 4. Impairment of agricultural industry consequent on bad seasons, and the competition of the products of other soils which can be cultivated under more favorable conditions; 5. Foreign tariffs and bounties and the restrictive commercial policies of foreign countries; 6. The working of the British Limited Liability Act. In addition to these special causes, others of a general character were mentioned; such as "the more limited possibilities of new sources of demand throughout the world, and the larger amount of capital seeking employment"; "the serious fall in prices"; "the appreciation of the standard of value" so far as connected with the fall of prices and foreign competition. A respectable minority of the commission also included, in the list of principal causes, the effect of British legislation, regulating the hours and conditions of labor on the cost of production
- ↑ The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce attributed it in great part to German and Belgian competition, to foreign import duties on home-manufactured goods exported abroad, and exorbitant railway rates; the Hartlepool Chamber to foreign competition; Manchester, the same; Leeds, "to foreign tariffs"; Liverpool, to a loss in a once large re-export trade in cotton; Wolverhampton, to changes in the hours of labor resulting from the operation of the Factory, Workshop, and Education Acts, and the action of the various trades-unions.
