trees—yield on an average not over 2 per cent of quinine, the bark of the cultivated tree in Java is reported to yield from 8 to 12 per cent.
The decline in the prices of many chemicals, due to improvements in methods and to excess of production, has also been very great the decline in soda-ash from 1872 having been 54 per cent, while bleaching-powders (chloride of lime) declined from £10 in 1873 to £6.15 in 1878, reacting to £9 in 1887.
Many other commodities, of greater or less importance, might be included in this investigation, with a deduction of like results; but a further exhibit is not necessary. For it is difficult to see how any one can rise from an examination of the record of the production and price experiences of the commodities which have been specified, which, it must be remembered, represent—considered either from the stand-point of qualities or values—the great bulk of the trade, commerce, and consumption of the world, without being abundantly and conclusively satisfied that the decline in their prices, which has occurred during the last ten or fifteen years, or from 1873, has been so largely due to conditions affecting their supply and demand, that if any or all other causes whatever have contributed to such a result, the influence exerted has not been appreciable; and further, that if the prices of all other commodities, not included in the above record, had confessedly been influenced by a scarcity of gold, the claims preferred by the advocates of the latter theory could not be fairly entitled to any more favorable verdict than that of "not proven."
But have all other commodities, for which conclusive evidence of a recent greatly-augmented production can not be adduced, exhibited in their recent price movements any evidence of having been subjected to any influences attributable to the scarcity of gold? For the consideration of this question, reference is made to the next paper of this series.
