The loss to the typical English investor of the pre-war period is sufficiently measured by the loss to the investor in Consols. Such an investor, as we have already seen, was steadily improving his position, apart from temporary fluctuations, up to 1896, and in this and the following year two maxima were reached simultaneously--both the capital value of an annuity and also the purchasing power of money. Between 1896 and 1914, on the other hand, the investor had already suffered a serious loss--the capital value of his annuity had fallen by about a third, and the purchasing power of his income had also fallen by nearly a third. This loss, however, was incurred gradually over a period of nearly twenty years from an exceptional maximum, and did not leave him appreciably worse off than he had been in the early ’eighties or the early ’forties. But upon the top of this came the further swifter loss of the war period. Between 1914 and 1920 the capital value of the investor’s annuity again fell by more than a third, and the purchasing power of his income by about two-thirds. In addition, the standard rate of income tax rose from 7½ per cent in 1914 to 30 per cent in 1921.[4] Roughly estimated in round numbers, the change may be represented thus in terms of an index of which the base year is 1914: [4] Since 1896 there has been the further burden of the Death Duties. +------+--------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+ | | Purchasing | Do. after | Money price | Purchasing | | | Power of the | deduction of | of the capital | Power of | | | Income of | Income Tax | value of | the capital | | | Consols.[5] | at the | Consols. | value of | | | | standard rate. | | Consols. | +------+--------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+ | 1815 | 61 | 59 | 92 | 56 | | 1826 | 85 | 90 | 108 | 92 | | 1841 | 85 | 90 | 122 | 104 | | 1869 | 87 | 89 | 127 | 111 | | 1883 | 104 | 108 | 138 | 144 | | 1896 | 139 | 145 | 150 | 208 | | 1914 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 | | 1920 | 34 | 26 | 64 | 22 | | 1921 | 53 | 39 | 56 | 34 | | 1922 | 62 | 50 | 76 | 47 | +------+--------------+----------------+----------------+-------------+ [5] Without allowance for the reduction of the interest from 3 to 2½ per cent.