standard sheetings from 1850 to 1885 has been about 10 per cent, and of standard prints and printing-cloths, during the same period, approximately 40 per cent.
Wool.—According to the statistics of Mr. Sauerbeck ("Journal of Statistical Society," March, 1887), the price of merino wool (Port Philip, Australia, average fleece), comparing the average of the series of years 1867-'77 and 1878-'85, declined 10·7 per cent; or, comparing the average price of 1867-'77 with that of the single year 1886, when wool "was cheaper than at any time within the memory of the present generation," 27 per cent. Certain fibers classed with wool, and known as "alpaca" and "mohair," and the grade of long-combing English wools known as "Lincoln," experienced a much greater decline after 1874-'75, owing to the curious circumstance that a change in fashion in those years almost entirely and suddenly destroyed any demand for the before popular, stiff, lustrous fabrics manufactured from such wools for female wear, and substituted in their place the soft and pliable cloths that are made from the merino wools.
The increase in the production and world's supply of raw wools, from the years 1860 to 1885 inclusive, was about 100 per cent. According to Mr. Sauerbeck's tables, the increase from 1873 to 1885 inclusive, was 20 per cent; according to Messrs. Helmuth, Schwartze & Co., of London, the increase from 1871-'75 to 1881-'85 was 23 per cent; and from 1871-'75 to 1886, 35 per cent. The wool-clip of the United States increased from 264,000,000 pounds in 1880 to 329,000,000 in 1885, or 24·6 per cent in six years. Such an increase in the world's supply of wool would undoubtedly have resulted in a greater decline in prices, had not the increase been accompanied, as was the case with cotton, with a very marked increase during the last quarter of a century in the world's consumption—i.e., from 2·03 pounds of clean wool per head in 1860 to 2·66 pounds in 1886.[1]
Silk.—The decline in the price of silk (Tsatlee), according to Mr. Sauerbeck, from the average price of 1867-'77 to the average of 1886, was about 40 per cent; and the average increase in supply of all varieties of silk-fiber, comparing 1873 with 1885, was reported by the same authority as about 12 per cent. No relation between the price movements of this commodity and supply and demand or any other agencies can, however, be established, which fails to take into account the great increase in the use of the ramie and other fibers and materials within recent years as substitutes for or adulterations of silk in the
- ↑ The details of this increase are thus stated by Messrs. Helmuth, Schwartze & Co., of London, in their annual review of the production and consumption of wool for 1887: "Making allowance," they say, "for the increase of population, we find that the principal development in the supply of wool took place from 1860 to 1868, in which period the consumption rose from 2·03 pounds of clean wool per head to 2·47 pounds, or about 22 per cent. From 1868 to 1879 the consumption remained practically unchanged, amounting on the average to 2·41 pounds clean wool per head. It rose to 2·49 pounds for the average of the next four years, and was 2·58 in 1884 and 2·66 pounds in 1886."
