Other results of the influx of gold during the second Victorian decade remain to be epitomized. The precious metal in the Bank of England, from less than eight millions in 1847, increased to twenty-two millions in 1853. The Bank rate during the whole decade was two per cent. The growth of trade was suddenly but steadily promoted. During 1853, twenty millions more of gold money than within any preceding twelvemonth changed hands among the public. Incidentally, it should be mentioned that a belief in the permanence of the low interest rate just mentioned caused Mr Gladstone, when Chancellor of the Exchequer in April 1853, to bring forward a scheme for the conversion of a portion of the three per cent. Consols, into Consols bearing a lower rate of interest, and that the interest on Exchequer Bills was a penny a day or one and a half per cent, per annum. The harvests of 1853-4 in England had been bad. The fresh purchases by the gold mine countries of English goods fully compensated us for the loss from this cause. The value of that custom may be judged from the figures which show the cost of life at the gold mines. In the early fifties flour rose to four times, meat to five times their usual value. An egg or a pill cost a dollar each.[5] For a miner in tolerable luck £2 were not an exceptional day's earnings. Nor between the years 1849-55 and onwards were the effects of the gold discoveries on foreign and domestic trade less noticeable. Within a single period of twelve months, the value of our exports increased by one-fourth. Most of these were required by consumers in California or in Australia as the case might be. The rise of wages owing to the rush to the gold fields amounted in 1851-2 nowhere to less than twenty per cent.; in some trades it was twenty-five per cent. In London the price of bricks was increased by fifty per cent. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham shared the general prosperity. Agricultural labour was not paid at a rate proportionate to its scarcity. The extent of that scarcity may be judged from Sir Morton Peto's suggestion that the Militia should be called in to complete the operations of harvesting which were interrupted by the inducements offered by contractors to navvies at wages varying between four shillings and threepence, and four shillings and sixpence a day. Thus the competition of the gold fields industry was directly instrumental, not only in increasing trade, and therefore production and wealth in the mother country, but in improving the condition of the industrial classes at home.