THE MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW. JANUARY, 186 7. THE COURSE OF PRICES. 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 elsewhere, 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 : Breadstuffs Wheat flour, State.. Wheat, best ex Genesee. Rye flour, 66 Corn meal, Jersey Wheat, white Gen,. White, Michigan White, Southern. Red, Western Corn, old Western. ....... Cotton, mid. upland. Fruit-Bunch raisins. Currants.... $c 500 6 25 500 6 25 |