the predictions of financial writers, a generation ago, upon
both sides of the Atlantic. The following statement will exhibit the
wholesale cash prices in the New York market, on the first day of
January, in the respective years, of six of the principal articals of
commerce:

1860. 1872. 1885.
Beef, per barrel $10.75 $10.00 $11.75
Pork, " " 16.25 14.00 12.25
Flour, " " 5.25 4.12 2.55
Rice, " 100 lbs. 3.87 8.44 5.62
Corn, " bushel .93 .81 .48
Cotton, " pound .11 3-4 .21 1-4 .11 1-4

War is the great enhancer of prices. During the Civil War in the United
States (1861-1865), the prices of the above articles were more than
doubled.

Gold, in the midst of its sudden plethora, was a perplexing problem to
the financial prophets of a third of a century ago. M. Michel Chevalier
(Revue des Deux Mondes, November, 1857) predicted,--"that a decline
would occur in the price of gold, equal to one-half of its former value;
that a period of peril was impending, full of inquietude, instability
and damage to a great variety of interests; that the value of gold would
be diminished, and that consequently wages and prices would be doubled;
that the duties on imports, and the interest on the debts of the
principal nations of the world, must necessarilly follow the same
course; that it would inevitably involve a re-coinage of all the
existing gold coins of the world, from time to time, in order to conform
to the price of the metal; that the value of the twenty-franc piece
would be reduced to 19 1-2, 19, 18 francs, as the depreciation
descended; and he, therefore, recommended a cessation of the gold
coinage until the lowest point of depreciation is reached; that the new
gold fields were likely to prove as productive as at first for several
generations; in no direction could new outlets be seen sufficiently
large to absorb the extra production in such a manner as to prevent a
fall in its value. It might fall until nineteen francs would correspond
only to the amount of well being which could then be obtained for five
francs." Poor man! He lived to see the utter failure of all his
predictions; to behold France become the largest coiner of gold in the
world; an exporter of the precious metals to the amount of $43,000,000
annually during a decade; the rise of the standard of gold from 15 1-2
to 18, as compared with