—to consider gold-standard countries—there is a remarkable family resemblance between the curves in Figure 3, tracing the index numbers of the United States and England. As long as the two countries were on or near a common gold basis, that is, in the entire period except when one or the other country was on a paper basis (because of the Napoleonic wars or the Civil War), English and American price movements have been strikingly parallel.
Fig. 5. Price Movements in Five Gold-Standard Countries
Showing how similar the ups and downs of prices have been. This similarity exists in spite of differences in methods of calculating the five index numbers.
For most other gold-standard countries the available statistics begin with 1890; and from that year until the outbreak of the war in 1914 there is a remarkable similarity among the price movements of these countries, namely, the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and even, though less strikingly, far-away Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and India.
