In surveying the question broadly, to discover whether there is anything
that affects the situation in common from the standpoint of varying
occupations, we find one, and only one, uniform and unfailing
characteristic; the prices of all commodities and of all property,
except in money centers, have fallen, and continue falling. Such a
phenomenon as a constant and progressive fall in the general range of
prices has always exercised so baleful an influence on the prosperity of
mankind that it never fails to arrest attention.
History gives evidence of no more prolific source of human misery than a
persistent and long continued fall in the general range of prices. But,
although exercising so pernicious an influence, it is not itself a
cause, but an effect.
When a fall of prices is found operating, not on one article or class of
articles alone, but on the products of all industries; when found to be
not confined to any one climate, country, or race of people, but to
diffuse itself over the civilized world; when it is found not to be a
characteristic of any one year, but to go on progressively for a series
of years, it becomes manifest that it does not and can not arise from
local, temporary or subordinate causes, but must have its genesis and
development in some principle of universal application.