104 MODERN MONETARY SYSTEMS
We should also note, but with some caution, the rise in
prices in the middle of the 19th century which accom-
panied the discovery and working of new gold mines, the
rise which began during the last years of the 19th century
and continued during the early years of the 20th century
before the outbreak of the Great War. It is true that this
last phenomenon was accompanied by a very considerable
increase in gold production in Australia and South Africa ;
but it also coincides with a whole set of new facts, a
general rise in Customs duties, the development of labour
organisations tending to restrict competition, trusts, car-
tels, etc. Hence scientifically we do not appear to be
justified in holding for certain and a priori that there
was a relation of cause and effect between this pheno-
menon and one of its possible antecedents, after ignoring
other factors which exercised an influence in the same
sense, and which might afford a sufficient explanation.?
suffered a depreciation of 339, in France between the end of the 15th
century and the last quarter of the 16th century. Moreover, during this
period, and as a result of continual alterations by public authorities in the
purchase price of precious metals both at home and abroad and in the scale
of values applied to coin and as a result of the concurrent circulation of all
kinds of different currencies, new and old, national and foreign, the public
was led to check as well as it might the fineness of the metal content of coin
and to consider that fineness a factor in fixing commodity prices. Lastly, it
should be added that no such concordance between the production of
precious metals and prices is to be found in the 17th or 18th centuries.
1'The trend of prices in this period is hardly more marked than such
upward movements as have been observed to occur as a part of the fluctua-
tions attendant upon a boom in trade crises. For instance, Sauerbeck’s
index number for England rose from 78 in 1852 to 102 in 1854 and to 105 in
1857 and then fell to 91 in 1858. The United States index rose from its
lowest point, 125,in 1852 to 138 in the short period between 1854 and 1856,
and then fell to 124 in 1858. (See Aftalion, “Les crises périodiques de
surproduction,” Vol. I, p. 20.)
2 I't should also be pointed out that with the modern development of
credit machinery and methods of clearing, the relation between the gold
stock and the entire amount of available funds is very complicated and
variable. Nevertheless it will be observed that price movements and
variations in gold production almost synchronised after the end of the
19th eentury. The production of gold, which had reached an annual
average of nearly 700 million francs between 1857 and 1860, fell slowly to
slightly more than 600 millions between 1881 and 1890, rose to nearly 850
