General causes ichich affect particular Jcinds of property. — The cereals
being annual productions, their market values are affected more or
less by large or small yields from year to year. This is true not only
as to local prices but to market values of the surplus generally. Effects
produced from this cause are much less now than in years before
facilities for distribution had reached their present state of develop-
ment. When thirty to forty days were required for the passage of a
ship with a cargo of 10,000 bushels of wheat across the Atlantic Ocean,
before telegraph wires and cables were used to convey information
concerning crops, before the Suez Canal was opened for trafBc, and
before steamships were built that can carry 100,000 bushels of grain
from New York to Liverpool in ten days, a very heavy crop or a very
light crop of any particular kind of grain in the United States mate-
rially affected market prices here for the surplus. Now, however, with
present conveniences for handling, storing, and shipping grain, with low
rates of transportation over long distances, it is the world's production,
and not that of any one country, that affects market values of grains
thatgo into the channels of commerce.
