Meantime, the purchasing power of the dollar which the railway company receives for a specified service is gradually growing smaller, owing to the general increases year by year in wages and in the cost of material.
Salted fish forms, along with boiled rice, one of the chief articles of food among the Burmese; and as the price of salted fish is gradually rising along with the prosperity and purchasing power of the population, this industry is on a very sound basis.
It would appear that the purchasing power of the inhabitants of India has increased of late years, and there is a growing demand for refined sugar, fostered by the circ*mstance that modern processes of manufacture can make a quality of sugar, broadly speaking, equal to sugar refined by animal charcoal, without using charcoal, and so the religious objections to the refined sugars of old days have been overcome.
As to the value of the bronze coins we are without information The purchasing power of money was very great.
Comparing the area of his empire with the corresponding area now under the British, it has been calculated that Akbar, three hundred years ago, obtained 152 millions where they obtain only 131 millions - an amount representing not more than one-half the purchasing power of Akbar's 151 millions.
