One of the causes to which, with some show of reason, the existing languor of business has been ascribed, is the uncertainty which prevails as to the continuance of the high prices of all the necessaries, conveniences and luxuries of life. The books of our mercantile firms show, in many cases, a balance on the wrong side. Business men dare not at present buy for future sale, lest they should suffer from further anticipated shrinkage in values, and be unable to dispose of their goods without ruinous losses. A partial paralysis is thus developed in not a few of the vast distributing agencies which play so important a part in the social economy of every great modern nation. Our mercantile classes do business from hand to mouth. Prudent men are driven, in self-defence, to refuse business rather than take the risks. They are, not unnaturally, getting weary of the long suspense, which not only diminishes the government revenue from taxation, but what is more important still, contributes to the impoverishing of the people, and to the hampering of that unexampled enterprise, energy, versatility and productive efficiency which are the secret of that amazing growth in material wealth in which we rejoice above all other nations in the world. The question, what will be the future course of prices, then, is one which is being anxiously asked, on 'change and lsewhere, by all classes of our citizens. In every counting room, manufactory, steamboat and railroad car, we find farmers, mechanics, manufacturers, bankers, agitating this problem. And it is one on the solution of which the well-being of all of us, and the salvation from bankruptcy of not a few, very much depends. Perhaps it may help some of us in such ir vestigations if we glance back at the movements of prices during the past, and endeavor to trace out the reasons for the changes which have occurred. To facilitate such a review we have compiled a table of the wholesale prices of the leading articles of foreign and domestic produce during the past nine years. This list might have been with advantage enlarged, but it is sufficiently extended for the purpose we have in view, which is to suggest a few practical principles which our readers can use for themselves, and apply to their own special business-rather than to deduce from these principles a perplexing multitude of inferential details. We give the prices on the 3d January of each of the last eight years at New York: Chicago, Spring Rye, Northern.. Oats, State. Corn, old Western.. .bush. 92 Cotton, mid. upland.. Mid. New Orleans.. Fish, dry cod.... Currants. Hay, shipping.. 100 lbs. 1 CO 90 77X 85 1 45 155 Hops. 20 23 Iron-Scotch pig. English bars. Laths.. Lead-Spanish ........ton. 5 65 515 700 Galena. Leather-hemlock, sole.. Oak Naval stores Lime, com. Rockland. Liquors, brandy, cog'c. Domestic whiskey... Molasses, N. Orleans Crude turpentine.. Common rosin, N. C.. Oils-crude whale Crude, sperm....... Linseed 1 40 140 Beef, city mess. Beef, repacked Chicago. Beef hams, extra.. Hams, pickled.. Shoulders, pickled.. Tallow Butter, State Butter, Orange County. Cheese Rice, good.. Salt, Liverpool, ground.. Liverpool, tine, Ashtons.. Seeds, clover Sugar, Cuba, good.. Whalebone, polar Wool, fleece.. .100 lbs. 4. 20 4.00 700 .... 76 165 160 25 155 137 50 We have chosen for our comparative exhibit the dull season of the opening year, because, for obvious reasons, many of the perturbing influences which often derange supply and demand are then more quiescent than usual, so that the normal level of prices may be expected to be more nearly reached than at any other uniform periods a year apart. Let us now see what the review teaches us. And, first, it shows that with the exception of wheat, cotton, rosin, iron, and a few other articles, whose fluctuations in the market are partly due to causes that are not far to seek, the general course of prices was steadily upward from the commencement of the paper money era, in January, 1862, until the issues reached their highest aggregate in 1864. This rise in prices, though often explained, is still misunderstood in some quarters. It was produced in accordance with the well-known law that "redundant money is depreciated money." When a forced issue was made of paper dollars, these dollars gradually sunk in value, and of course prices were proportionately larger when expressed in such dollars. To illustrate this, we may suppose that the excessive issue had been carried, as it was in the rebel States, as well as in the War of Independence, to such a point that the dollars were only worth a dime; then it is obvious that prices would be expressed in these small depreciated dollars by a removal of the decimal point, so that $10.00 in coin would be equivalent to $100.00. All history and all experience proves the uniformity of this general law, that prices rise under a depreciated currency, whether the dilution and loss of value be produced by a debasing of the coin, as in ancient Rome under the tribunes, and in modern France during John Law's daring financial manipulations or whether, as in more recent days, the same end has been reached by redundant issues of irredeemable paper money. This last experiment has been tried in Prussia, in France, in Austria, in England, as well as on this continent, and always with the uniform result that in proportion as the currency is overloaded and redundant it loses its purchasing power, more of it is wanted to make a given purchase, or, in other words, prices universally advance. It has been observed, however, that this advance is not uniform. Some commodities rise more rapidly than others, and sooner float on the rising current of inflation. The earliest movement is usually in gold, which is the most sensitive commodity in the market, next follow stocks, and other easily convertible property; afterwards the various necessaries and luxuries of living, then the wages of labor, and last of all real estate, with other fixed investments. Such, in brief, is an account of the effects of inflated currency on prices which was given by one of the leading writers on finance in England during the paper money period at the beginning of this century. And it reads very much like a history of what has taken place among ourselves during the last five years. But, secondly, the phenomena of advancing prices which we have endeavored to analyse are not developed without numerous spasms and violent oscillations. These are aggravated by the speculative manoeuvres of shrewd men, who combine in powerful cliques to make gain by the mutations of values, and do not scruple, with that view, to resort to mischievous expedients that they may precipitate a fall or "rig the market" for a rise. In our own case, other perturbations of prices, as we have repeatedly shown, arose during the last three or four years from our excessive and badly adjusted taxation, as well as from a number of causes which, during the war, either increased the cost of production, or gave a monoply to a few persons, or deranged in some other way the equilibrium of supply and demand. Let us now turn to the other side of the picture. As prices rise when the currency is expanded, so they fall as it is contracted, only with this difference, that there is very much more danger of the spasms and violent movements in prices during a season of contraction, because of the derangement of public confidence and the mischief which is caused in the money-market whenever the contraction is not made skilfully, slowly and at the right time. In view of this fact there are not a few persons who look for violent fluctuations during the current year in the value of many speculative commodities, especially of such securities as are the most speculatively dealt in at the Stock Exchange. As such stormy oscillations in prices offer chances by which a large class of persons in Wall street and elsewhere hope to make large fortunes, influences are ever at work to induce the Secretary of the Treasury, the members of committees, and the leading members of Congress, to propose something which shall seem likely to unsettle financial affairs, and to provoke alternate fears and hopes as to the policy of the Treasury and its effect on the money market. The only suggestion we shall offer as a deduction from the whole of these facts is that the people need and must have a fixed financial policy. Congress is held responsible by the country. Let the policy of gradual safe contraction, of wise remission of oppressive taxation, of publicity in all the doings of the Treasury, be settled and fixed so that every man may know what to expect in the immediate future, and then the descent from our inflated values to safer and more legitimate prices may perhaps be so slowly and gradually effected that our public interests will not be sacrificed nor our public prosperity long interrupted. Or if this is too much to realize, the present intolerable uncertainty and suspense would at least be at an end. A SOLDIER'S REASONS AGAINST EQUALIZING BOUNTIES. Of course a soldier's reasons have no need of a preamble. 1st. There is no honest, urgent demand for this measure. One of the shrewdest maxims of the Legislature is to follow not lead. It may suffer some abuses to remain after their due time, but it saves an infinite amount political romancing and knight-errantry, far more mischievious. Walpole's principle, Quieta non movere, was sound and just; and it was only his extension of it to oppose an actual public sentiment-probably the most powerful and unanimous that ever gathered against a British Minister -which cost him his place and so large a portion of his past fame. There are two reasons why such a public sentiment should be the condition precedent of legislation. The first, as expressed by Macbiavelli, is that, while a people make many mistakes, they make fewer than any individual. The second, and of peculiar force in a free Government, is that upon the acquiescence or support of the people must depend the value or even safety of such enactments. Now, of such a public sentiment there is in the present case hardly a sign. The parties to it would be two, soldiers, and the citizens at large. The latter class have no desire to be taxed fifty or or seventy-five millions a year beyond the present enormous burdens, but are ready, in their generosity and gratitude, to do anything that seems really necessary or just. Certainly no strenuous pressure can come from them. Of the soldiers it may be said that no spontaneous, earnest demand has been made or will ever be, for the equalization of bounties. The writer went into service as an enlisted man of an infantry regiment. His acquaintance with all ranks of the army is as general as four years of campaigning would naturally make it, and yet he never heard two soldiers talking together of the proposed bounty bill as of something which was right, and should be pressed through. Nor does he believe that there has been any considerable feeling among the actual soldiers of the republic, at the bottom of all the demonstrations that have been made. The whole movement has had its origin with demagogues, generally in local primary interests, in the hope of getting soldiers' votes. Our simple-hearted veterans have been approached by these pure patriots with suggestions that they might as easily as not obtain a few hundred dollars from the public purse, by making a claim for it. If any conduct was ever litigious in the worst sense, and deserved all the common law penalties against those who make strife to profit by it, theirs has been. The whole thing has been "got up," and looks so. The men, who have urged the matter to its present point, are just as much friends of the soldier as those disreputable practitioners who excite lawsuits on shares, are friends of the community. 2d. The expense of such a donation. I do not mean the large amount to be so distributed, but the cost over and above all the soldiers will get. This is the great argument against all unnecessary assumption by government, either of charity or business enterprise. Ancient Athens used to bestow on each citizen a largess, on Theatre days, of two oboli, the price of admission. The political economy of that date had not mastered the principle that the two oboli given, cost the reciptant three or four. The revenue of the city was derived, say, from customs taken on the Hellespont, but these raised the price of wheat at Athens far more than enough to compensate the gain. It would probably be a reasonable estimate that every dollar of taxes raised by this nation cost the consumer, in enhanced prices, two dollars. Hon. George Opdyke, in his treatise on Political Economy, (p. 211,) makes the expense of collecting revenue by customs (including the enhancement of profits, &c., as merchandise passed through its several stages of exchange) "seventy-seven per cent. on the net amount collected by government." But this is only the first effect. The cost of foreign goods thus raised, the domestic producer, himself a consumer of these, must put up his own prices somewhat to correspond. Without any attempt to determine exactly what the proportion is, there can be no doubt that the general exaggeration of prices throughout the community would be as great as has been stated. Now, a raising of prices is a good thing when it results from an enlarged demand and a widening market; but when it is caused either by taxation or speculation, its only effect on the healthful and permanent industries of the country must be evil, and thus continually. It is, of course, a consideration of no small moment, whether the ad |