It would be impossible to trace all the various causes that have produced these changes in money value, but a few of the more prominent ones may be indicated as showing their great variety and force.
From 1840 to 1849 a great decline in prices is noticeable, similar to the decline that we know has been going on in the last twenty years. This is doubtless due in both cases mainly to increasing demand for money, caused by growing population and expanding commerce, and which the supply of gold and silver or substitutes therefor did not keep pace with. From 1850 to 1857 prices generally rose, owing to the increased gold production in Australia and California, aided doubtless by the increased use of credit which rising prices always stimulates. The collapse of this credit in the panic of 1857 sent prices down again. The slow recovery from this condition was greatly enhanced by the breaking out of the Civil War, during which thousands of men were destroying instead of producing, thus raising the prices of nearly all commodities by decreasing the supply and increasing the demand relative to gold, while meantime the demand for gold was lessened by the use of paper money in this country. The disbanding of the armies at the close of the war, and the return of labour to productive enterprises, lowered prices rapidly during 1867, 1868, and 1869. From this depression they recovered almost as rapidly in the era of development from 1869 to 1872, the large production of silver from the Nevada and other discoveries during that period assisting greatly in this recovery, and the usual extension of credit at such times also contributing. This credit collapsed in the panic of 1873, and the demonetization of silver by several European nations about the same time prevented any increased production of silver from affecting the decline which then set in, and which has with one or two reactions been continuous ever since.
In the light of the facts, shown by these diagrams, any claim for even approximate stability of value for gold, or for the money as a whole on the gold basis, under the systems now in use, is preposterous. Moreover, the change has been, of late years, of the worst kind,--an increase of money value. If it were steady, its effects could be calculated and discounted to some extent, but caused, as it is, by a variety of forces of varying strengths, the increase is at some times wholly nullified, or even turned to a decrease, by extensions of credit, while again it is doubled in effect by the withdrawal of such credit.