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$55,000,000, or about thirty-two per cent. of the total circulation of the national banks, September 1st, 1892.

If we look at New York alone, where the issue reached its maximum on August 29th, with $38,200,000, we find that this sum was forty-four per cent. of the reserve of the New York banks on August 26th, and was nearly seven times the outstanding circulation of the New York Banks on July 1st. It is obvious, therefore, that the clearing house certificate is a very powerful engine, which can be put in operation at very short notice and on a large scale in financial centers, in order to make up temporarily for a stringency in currency. There is also no doubt, we believe, as to the general good results which this action produced upon the mercantile. community at the time.

This method of meeting a stringency, though different in form, is peculiarly analogous in essence to the method which has been adopted by the Bank of England in similar emergencies. The fiduciary circulation of the Bank of England is limited by law to a sum equal, at present, to about £15,500,000. There is, therefore, no way by which the circulation of the Bank of England can be increased, except by a withdrawal of an equivalent amount of gold. On three occasions, however, in 1847, 1857, and 1866, the Bank of England has been allowed by the government to disregard the limitations of Peel's Act on the circulation, and to increase the volume of its notes which are based upon securities. On two of these occasions it did not actually take advantage of the permission given it, but in 1857 the banking department did carry to the issue department certain securities for which it received £4,000,000 worth of notes.

The formal difference between these two methods is very great. In one case the action is taken by a group of banks, in the other by a single bank. In one case it is taken. spontaneously, in the other case it is taken with the sanction of the government. In one case it results in the issue of certificates which have no legal tender power, and are not current, excepting among a small group of banks, and then only for a specific purpose; in the other case it results in issuing bank notes enjoying the same legal tender quality as

other bank notes; yet, in their essence, the two processes are singularly alike. In both cases the ultimate result is to turn securities, for the time being, into currency.

It thus appears that in both countries it has been found desirable in a panic, to provide a means by which good securities can be made to take the place of currency.

Under these circumstances the question may well be raised whether it would not be wise for Congress to make this method of meeting a crisis more effectual by legalizing it, and at the same time put it under control in order to prevent any possible abuse.

The death of Professor Jowett, the Master of Balliol, deserves more notice than it has received from the American public. It is not as a translator of Plato and Thucydides, nor as a leader in the Broad Church movement, that he bears his chief title to remembrance, but as an educator of English students in the transition period between ancient and modern methods of study. He may lay special claims to a tribute from the YALE REVIEW, since his work had much in common with that of the men who have given the distinctive features to Yale thought and Yale education.

The intellectual life of Oxford before Jowett's day was largely connected with religious and theological controversy. It was around men like Pusey, or Newman, or Arnold, that the student thought of the second quarter of the century grouped itself. A few of these well defined groups. were in a ferment of activity; the rest of the University world was in intellectual stagnation. With his advent at Balliol, Jowett introduced a zeal for work independent of theological or religious ideals. He taught men to aim at tangible objects immediately before them. He was thoroughly at home in the modern system of competition, and developed that competition for all it was worth in Oxford University life. Balliol became a reading and working college, in a way that distinguishes it from all other colleges at Oxford. Critics might object that Jowett's ideals were narrow; that he made men work from lower motives rather

than higher, for honors rather than for humanity. But work they did, and that right hard; and to Jowett's mind this was the main thing. Better to work for an examination than to dawdle for an ideal. Of course this attitude did injustice to a few men of the very highest type; but where it did injustice to one, it shook the nonsense out of half a dozen. Jowett unquestionably had the feeling that, while men were at the University, they were best occupied with University ambitions; it was time enough to settle the world's problems when they were actually in the world.

But Jowett and Jowett's pupils were on the whole inclined. to take the world's problems in the narrower rather than the broader sense. Jowett was an excellent committee-man, and an indifferent theologian. The dogmas of the Church and the dogmas of science both failed to arouse enthusiasm in him. He was attached to the Church as a working institution; its value to him in this respect far outweighed considerations of theology. His scepticism as to miracles was thrown into the background by his scepticism as to the importance of the subject of miracles. He probably had the same scepticism as to the importance of the conservation of energy or of the doctrine of natural selection. He was assailed by zealots of all shades of opinion; but he might well have replied, as Montucla did before him: "It is the business of the Sorbonne to discuss, of the Pope to decide, and of a mathematician to go straight to heaven in a perpendicular line." He was not a man of the future, who created new thought; but he was emphatically a man of his day, who stimulated the existing thought, and brought it into practical, healthful contact with the work of everyday life.

RESULTS OF RECENT

IN

INVESTIGATIONS ON

PRICES IN THE UNITED STATES.'

N 1891, at a time when the effects of protective duties on prices and on the expenses of living were under active discussion, the United States Senate authorized its Finance Committee to collect facts and figures to show what the actual course of prices and wages in the United States had been. With commendable judgment and impartiality, the Committee put the work of securing and digesting the desired statistics into the hands of men whose ability and training ensured trustworthy results. The collection of the primary facts was given to the trained force directed by Commissioner Wright of the Bureau of Labor,-a name which gives ample assurance that this fundamental part of the investigation was conducted with perfect skill and scrupulous care. The arrangement and digesting of the ample material gathered by the Bureau of Labor was entrusted to Professor R. P. Falkner, to whose choice economists and statisticians owe a most discriminating analysis and presentation of the results.

The first report of the Committee, issued in 1892, presented statistics on the course of retail prices immediately before and immediately after the date when the tariff act of 1890 (the McKinley Tariff Act) went into effect. The statistics there given, meant to show the first effects of that measure, bore on a subject of only temporary interest, and indeed were at best of no great significance. But the signal skill and care with which they had been gathered gave promise of results of more enduring value when a wider and more important range of subjects should be covered. Such results we have in the second report of the Committee, published in the present year (1893). On the specific subject which gave the impulse to the whole inquiry,—the

1 This paper, read before the International Statistical Institute at Chicago, is here published through the courtesy of the Institute. It will appear in due time in the Bulletin of the Institute.

effect of tariff legislation,-it is indeed doubtful whether much has been contributed to the solution of disputed questions. But on some subjects at least as important, on economic history, and on the history and theory of currency and prices, we have a mass of material the importance of which it would be difficult to overstate.

The second report covers wholesale prices from 1840 to the present time. It contains also a valuable collection of statistics on rates of transportation, and on money wages; but we are here concerned chiefly with the statistics of prices. The wholesale prices of 223 articles were obtained for every year from 1860 to 1891; and the prices of 90 out of these 223 articles were secured from 1840 to 1891. These returns are digested and arranged by Professor Falkner in a manner to enable the investigator to follow closely the methods employed, and to display with perfect clearness the results attained. On the period from 1840 to 1860 the range of material covered is as wide as that in any other investigation of the same sort; while for the period from 1860 to 1891 it is much wider. Clearly we have here a contribution of signal importance to the statistical material without which so many questions, both of permanent theoretical interest and of immediate practical importance, cannot be answered. It would be useless to attempt to discuss all the noteworthy results of the investigation. I shall consider one or two points only; and, more especially, the methods employed in the securing the general index number for the movement of prices as a whole, and the results as to the movement of prices under the influence of the paper money issues of the civil war.

In presenting the results for comparison year by year, 1860 was selected in all cases as the base. That year was a normal one, marked by prices neither much higher nor much lower than those of the years immediately before and after. It was the first year for which the statistics were fully secured for the whole list of 223 articles. It marks the beginning of a new period in the economic development of the United States; and it gives a convenient standard for measuring the extraordinary effects of the emissions of paper

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