or, indeed, of almost any other article. In both cases the decline would seem to find a sufficient explanation in a common expression of the trade circulars, "Our supplies have far outrun our consumptive requirements." In the case of coffee, the total imports into Europe and the United States, comparing the receipts of the year 1885 with 1873, showed an increase of 57 per cent; while the increase in the crops of Brazil, Ceylon, and Java during the same period has been estimated at 52 per cent. Subsequent to January, 1886, the price of coffee, owing to a partial failure of the Brazil crop, rapidly advanced more than 150 per cent, "ordinary" or "exchange" standards having sold in New York in June, 1886, at 22 cents per pound, the highest point in the history of American trade, unless possibly during the war, when entirely abnormal circumstances controlled prices. From these high prices there was a subsequent disastrous reaction and extensive failures. In the matter of the supply of tea, the total exports from China and India increased from 234,000,000 pounds in 1873 to 337,000,000 pounds in 1885, or 44 per cent; the exports from India having increased from 35,000,000 pounds in 1879 to 68,000,000 pounds in 1885.[1]
Hops.—The report of the German Hop-Growers' Association for 1886 estimates the quantity grown throughout the world in that year at 93,340 tons, and the annual consumption at only 83,200 tons, so that there was an excess of production over consumption in 1886 of nearly 10,000 tons. As might have been expected, there was a notable decline in the world's prices for hops.
Such having been the production and price experience in recent years of the world's great food commodities, attention is next invited to a similar record of experience in respect to the metals.
Iron.—Sir Lowthian Bell, recognized as one of the best authorities on the production of iron and steel, in his testimony before the Royal British Commission in 1885, fixed the world's production of pig-iron in 1870 at 11,565,000 tons, which increased to 14,345,000 tons in 1872. From that date production continued almost stationary until 1879,
- ↑ The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Goschen, in his budget speech for 1887, calls attention to the following curious incident of financial disturbance growing out of a change in the quality of a staple commodity—tea—which, in turn, has been contingent on a change in the locality or country of its production: "Whereas, ten years ago," he said, "we (Great Britain) received 156,000,000 pounds of tea from China and 28,000,000 pounds from India, or 184,000,000 pounds altogether, in 1886 we received 145,000,000 pounds from China and 81,000,000 pounds from India. In the transfer of consumption of tea from the tea of China to that of India, we have to put up with a loss of revenue owing to the curious fact that the teas of India are stronger than the teas of China, and therefore go further, so that a smaller quantity of tea is required to make the same number of cups of tea." Mr. Goschen further called attention to the fact that "the fall in the price of tea and sugar (in Great Britain) has been so great, that whereas in 1866 a pound of tea and a pound of sugar would have cost 2s. 6d. and in 1876 2s. 1 14d., in 1886 they would have cost only 1s. 7 14d., or 3d. less than they would have cost in 1866 with all the duties taken off."
