Wholesale Commodity Prices in the United States, 1795-1824

Abstract

T HE index numbers of prices here presented in monthly form for the period I795 to I824 were constructed as a part of a study of the financial history of the United States during and immediately following the War of i8I2.1 To students of international trade, government finance, and money, banking, and prices, the developments of a hundred years ago are of interest because of the similarity between that period and the recent war and post-war period. It is hoped that the index numbers of commodity prices at wholesale may be of service to students of the history of these years. Such series provide a continuous record around which non-quantitative data may be organized, and, being sensitive barometers of economic life, they enable us to say something concerning the timing and the magnitude of the effect of the forces at work. A description of the construction of the indexes of prices in the United States from I795 to I824 is given in Part I below. Three indexes of prices in the Boston marketone of the prices of domestically produced goods, one of imported goods, and one of domes'tically produced and imported goods (the all commodities index) have been computed by months for the 30 years. In this section also indexes of prices of domestic goods quoted in the markets of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore, from i8io to I8I9, are presented. In Part II the index numbers for the years i802-2o,have been examined to find out when business recessions and crises occurred, and some non-statistical material has been quoted which helps to explain the movements of prices in this period. Our conclusions concerning the causes of fluctuations in prices must necessarily be tentative, for the data upon which our judgment must be based are fragmentary.