Whenever and wherever the mutterings of discontent were hushed by the fear of increased standing armies, the foundations of society were honey-combed by powerful secret political associations. The cause at work to produce this state of things was so subtle, and its advance so silent, that the masses were entirely ignorant of its nature. They had come to regard money as an institution fixed and immovable in value, and when the price of property and the wages of labor fell, they charged the fault, not to the money, but to the property and the employer. They were taught that the mischief was the result of overproduction. Never having observed that overproduction was complained of only when the money stock was decreasing, their prejudices were aroused against labor-saving machinery. They were angered at capital, because it either declined altogether to embark in industrial enterprises or would only embark in them upon the condition of employing labor at the most scanty remuneration. They forgot that falling prices compelled capital to avoid such enterprises on any other condition, and for the most part to avoid them entirely. They did not comprehend that money in shrinking volume was the prolific parent of enforced idleness and poverty, and that falling prices divorced money capital, from labor, but they none the less felt the paralyzing pressure of the shrinking metallic shroud that was closing around industry. The increased yield of the Russian gold fields in 1846 gave some relief and served as a parachute to the fall in prices, which might otherwise have resulted in a great catastrophe. But the enormous metallic supplies of California and Australia were all needed to give substantial and adequate relief. Great as these supplies were, their influence in raising prices was moderate and soon entirely arrested by the increasing populations and commerce which followed them. In the twenty-five years between 1850 and 1876 the money stock of the world was more than doubled, and yet at no time during this period was the general level of prices raised more than 18 per cent. above the general level of 1848. A comparison of this effect of an increasing volume of money after 1848 with the effect of a decreasing volume between 1809 and 1848 strikingly illustrates how largely different in degree is the influence upon prices of an increasing or decreasing volume of money. The decrease of the yield of the mines since about 1865, while population and commerce have been advancing, has already produced unmistakable symptoms of the same general distrust, non-employment of labor, and political and social disquiet, which have characterized all former periods of shrinking money. The time that has elapsed since that report was written has but served to verify and emphasize its statements.