While some classes in the community lose in a period of rising prices, particularly wage-earners and bond-holders whose income rises slowly in comparison with the increase in the cost of living, the speculators, merchants and manufacturers find in such a period a great opportunity to make money and business rapidly expands. The following pages will describe a noteworthy development of industry and trade in the period immediately preceding the World War; and the reader will realize, even when no reference is made to it, that the change in the price level has been an important factor in the development. One caution, however, seems at this point particularly advisable. Many of the statistics following, in which the development is pictured, are given in terms of money values. These figures grow with the rise in prices, even when there is no change in the physical amount of business transacted, and are an accurate index of the volume of trade only when they are reduced to an extent corresponding with the rise of prices.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS
1. In the example given, sect. 386, distinguish the producer, the transporter, and the consumer. Show how each one of these gained by the advance in organization. Did any one lose by it?
2. Of what wares are large amounts still kept in storehouses, and why? [Cf. U. S. Monthly Summary, Oct., 1903, vol. 11. no. 4, pp. 1033-1095, Warehousing industry in U. S.]
3. Study, from newspaper accounts, the effect of an interruption of commerce by one of the causes suggested in the text.
4. Distinguishing producer, middleman, and consumer, show what has been the effect on each of the introduction of the telegraph.
5. Service of the postal system to commerce. [James in Depew, One hund. years, chap. 5.]
6. Development of the modern system of advertising. [Ayer in Depew, One hund. years, chap. 13.]
7. Nobody complains because the farmer who grows wheat or wool does not also make flour or cloth. Is there any good reason why the man who makes the flour or cloth should also market it?
8. Study the biography of some great merchant, and find out whether he made money out of people, or made money for people and kept only a share for himself. [James Burnley, Millionaires and kings of enterprise, Lond. and Phila., 1901; Fortunes made in business, London, 1884, 2 vols.]