Aug. 6.
Tue latest index figures of the price of commodities, those for the month of May, show the first decline since the temporary drop occurring subsequent to the armistice. It is not " large decline, just over two per cent., and although we have been warned against undue optimism resulting from this fall, it is satisfactory to note a continuance in many quarters. Among the favourable indications are that the world's wheat crop generally is to be greater than was at first believed, and there is also the cheapening tendency of cotton. This last has had a very considerable effect in Japan, where spinners, already in a bad state of nerves, incline to believe that their previous heavy commitments at high rates may now prove their utter undoing. The general reduction in the price of foodstuffs would have been all the greater were it not for the fact that sugar is soaring, but in regard to this commodity a check in wholesale rates has now also been announced. The factor making for many of these reductions is largely the action of the consumer. The public, principally in Great Britain and America, and now also in other countries, has at last awakened from its dream of extravagance, has discovered many things it could well do without and that substitutes
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.