The Register Makes A Discovery

The Ann Arbor Register has just diseovered that the decline of prices during the past 23 years has been general. This is but auother way of saying that the gold in which those prices are measured has appreciated. If the Register will consult the works of such eminent statisticians as Zooke Ivetber, Saurbeck and Mulhull which may be found ia the University library, it will find that the general average of the world's prices has always been controlled by the world's supply of metallic money. If the material which is made by law the standard &f vafue is plentiful and easy to obtain, high prices will prevail; if it is scarce and difficult to reach it will oommand a greater quantity of other things, pricesl will be low. Representing the prices of 1849 by 100 the prices of 180! were 160. The" decline of prices from 1809 to 1849 is paralleled andexplained by an 'average' annual decrease of 35 per cent in the production of the precious metáis. In 1849 California and Australia began to pour their golden treasurer into the lap of commerce and prices increased as the value of money declined until the prices of 1873 were 38 per cent higher than the prices of 1849. In 1873 farseeing financiers, whose interests lay in increásing the value of money secured the demonetization of silver thereby destroying one-half of the source from which the stock of money is kept up, and prices again declined until the prices of 1893-4-5-6 have been about 15 per cent lower thau the prices of 1849, the lowest previous prices of the eentury. It is regarded by economists as a fundamental truth in monetary scieice that an increase in the value of the material of which money is made means a decline in the price of all things measured by that money. The re-establishment of the unrestricted coinage of silver money is proposed as the only effective way of stopping the appreciation of gold.