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Front Page  Titles (by Subject) Expansion of Trade. - Money and the Mechanism of Exchange
Expansion of Trade. - William Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange [1875]Edition used:Money and the Mechanism of Exchange (New York: D. Appleton and Co. 1876).
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Expansion of Trade.
No one doubts that in the last thirty years there has been an immense expansion in the trade of this and most other countries. If, as is very commonly done, we take the foreign trade as a test of the general advance of industry, we find that the total declared real value of British and Irish produce exported from the United Kingdom was, in 1846, about 58 millions sterling. In 1866 it amounted to 189 millions, or more than three times as much. In the mean time the bank-note circulation had remained almost unchanged, and such alteration as there was, consisted in a decrease. The total circulation of bank-notes, English, Scotch, and Irish, was, in 1846, 39 millions, and in 1866, 38½ millions. I believe, however, that the best test of the progress of trade, both internal and external, is furnished by the out-put of coal, the mainspring of our wealth. Now, in 1854 the total quantity of coal raised was about 65 millions of tons, and the note currency 38 millions; in 1866 the coal raised had increased to 101½ millions of tons, or by 56 per cent., while the note currency still remained almost as before, namely, 38½ millions. Between 1866 and 1874, indeed, there was a remarkable increase in the circulation, the amount of which rose to £43,912,000, or by 14 per cent., but the production of coal had in the mean time risen to 127 millions, an increase, compared with 1854, of 95 per cent.
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