A BLACK YEAR FOR INVESTORS.
It has become of late an indispensable qualification for moving in polite society, to have a theory of the depression of trade. One can no longer dine out in comfort without having at his command an adequate supply of small talk about sugar bounties, reciprocity, and Mr Giffen's letters to the 'Times.' If he ventured forth insufficiently equipped, he might find lying in wait for him on one side a zealous missionary of the Fair Trade League, and on the other a cock-sure apostle of the Cobden Club. Unfortunately we are not all gifted with the happy disposition of Mr Giffen, which enables him to refuse point-blank to see that trade is bad, or that manufacturers have anything to grumble about. In the experience of most of us, the commercial world is very much out of joint; and if we are to believe pessimists like Mr Ashmead-Bartlett, the man is not born yet who is to set it right. Mr Bright himself has given up disputing that the Board of Trade returns are bad. Between 40 and 50 millions sterling decrease in a single year is more than can be explained away in half-a-dozen of the most tersely worded jibes ever flung at the heads of unbelieving Tories. The more that the men of light and leading explain to us, the darker the mystery appears to grow. That profits are diminishing, that values are shrinking, and that the bitter struggle sardonically called "business" grows harder every day, we all know, but the why and the wherefore are as yet unsolved problems. The oracles who undertake to enlighten us on the causes of our misery are becoming one of the worst of its aggravations.
Each succeeding year leaves the country decidedly poorer than it found it; for not only has the productive income of the community further declined, but in one direction or another a serious cut has been made into its capital. It is not in the Board of Trade returns that we shall be able to trace this most grave though least obvious evidence of evil times. In the records of a very different institution – the London Stock Exchange is – the darkest lesson to be read of how the country is suffering. Merchants and manufacturers complain loudly of what in many cases is merely diminished incomes, but a bad year among investors may mean no income at all, and more or less complete sacrifice of capital. 1884 was such a year. Following on a series of sharp catastrophes in the leading investment markets, it found investors poor, and it left many of them in despair. The turn of the tide they had patiently waited for did not come – it did not even seem to be any nearer. The slow decline which killed them by inches was not stayed. Gleams of false hope visited them from time to time, but as a rule the shrinkage of prices went steadily on from January to December. It became so general that it ceased to discriminate, and attacked good stocks as well as bad. Consols suffered in common with North British Rails, and, excepting foreign bonds, no principal market has escaped unshaken. If the London Official List of the 31st December 1884 were minutely compared with the List of the same day in 1883, every variation in price being calculated on the amount of stock in the hands of
