INFLUENCE OF TRADE UNIONS ON PRICES.

Evening Star, Issue 3047, 23 November 1872, Page 2 (Supplement)

INFLUENCE OF TRADE UNIONS ON PRICES.

in London the ordinary consumer is unpleasantly conscious of a considerable rise in the price of commodities and services generally. In the manufacturing districts the advance presents itself with greater sharpness. A list of prices of hardware goods quoted in the Statistical Journal on the authority of the Blnnhii/luun Dailij Post affords an illustration. We select from the sixty articles of the list some that have be n most markedly appreciated. The period of comparison is June, 1872, with September, 1871, 'an interval of nine mouths. The increase iu the price of iron bars is 53 per cent. ; copper, 53 per cent. ; copper sheets, 50 per cent. ; tin plates, 48 per cent. ; nickel —used in making “ German Silver”—4l per cent. ; yellow metal, 54 per cent. ; regains of antimony the principal ingredient of “ Britannia metal”—67per cent, ; brass, 53 per cent; iron gas im-e, 11/ per cent, ; galvanized buckets, 42 per cent. ; chains, 55 per cent. ; wrought nails, 50 per cent. ; cut nails, 95 per cent. ; cast-iron wall and lath nails, 44 per cent.; frying pans, 67 per cent.; cut tacks, 50 per cent. ; brass tubes, 44 per cent. ; brass wire, 44 per cent. ; and copper wire, 43 per cent. The other articles have also experienced a great rise

in value, but not no great as in the selected cases. A writer in a Manchester contemporary, remarking upon the present condition of the trade in spinning and weaving cotton, a-serts that it is now being carried on without profit, in consequence of the great rise in the cost of produciion. What the rise lias been “it is not easy, 1 the writer oh erves, “ to state with exactness, but the following estimate is not an excessive one?” Compared with the cost eighteen months ago, there is an increase in the cost of building—inclusive of steam-engines and mill-gearing—-of about 30 per cent. ; of machinery the average coat has advanced 50 per cent., and coals GO per cent It is an economic question of some interest to determine to what extent the recent rise in prices has been affected by the advance in the rate of wages.— Pall Mall Gazette.