The numbers
Everything on this page comes from tables and statements printed in the book, with the page
attached. Nothing has been recalculated, converted, or adjusted; where the book gives dollars,
those are its own conversions and are labelled as such. The figures live in
_data/*.json and the charts are generated from them, so a number in a caption and a
number in a table cannot drift apart.
The issues, and the limits
Read the last column first. Almost every authorisation arrived with a solemn declaration about how much would circulate, and each declaration was overtaken by the next vote — twice within a single month in late 1791.
Five columns — scroll the table sideways to reach the pledged limits.
| Date | Authorised | Running total | The limit pledged at the same time | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 1790 | 400,000,000 | 400,000,000 | No further issue — the assurance the whole debate had turned on | p. 7 |
| 29 September 1790 | 800,000,000 | 1,200,000,000 | The total in circulation shall never exceed 1,200,000,000, and notes returned for land shall be burned | p. 19 |
| 19 June 1791 | 600,000,000 | 1,800,000,000 | None offered | p. 21 |
| November 1791 | — | 1,800,000,000 | Circulation limited to 1,400,000,000 | p. 33 |
| 17 December 1791 | 300,000,000 | 2,100,000,000 | Circulation shall never reach more than 1,600,000,000 — the third limit in fourteen months, and the second in one month | p. 33 |
| 30 April 1792 | 300,000,000 | 2,400,000,000 | None offered | p. 34 |
| 31 July 1792 | 300,000,000 | 2,700,000,000 | None offered | p. 35 |
| 14 December 1792 | — | 3,500,000,000 issued; 600,000,000 burned | None offered | p. 35 |
| Through 1792 | monthly | ≈3,000,000,000 in circulation by January 1793 | None offered | p. 36 |
| September 1793 | 2,000,000,000 | — | None offered | p. 40 |
| Late 1793 | 500,000,000 | over 3,000,000,000 authorised during 1793 alone | None offered | pp. 40, 46 |
| 22 December 1795 | — | 40,000,000,000 | The whole amount issued shall be limited to 40,000,000,000 and then the copper plates shall be broken. About 10,000,000,000 more was issued anyway | p. 53 |
| Amounts in livres, renamed francs in 1795. The terms of each issue — interest, denominations, the vote — are on the timeline. | ||||
Paper in circulation
Logarithmic scale — each gridline is ten times the one below
| When | In circulation | Page |
|---|---|---|
| April 1790 | 400 million | p. 7 |
| 14 December 1792 | 2,800 million | p. 35 |
| end of January 1793 | close upon 3,000 million | p. 36 |
| toward the end of 1794 | 7,000 million | p. 49 |
| end of May 1795 | 10,000 million | p. 49 |
| end of July 1795 | 14,000 million | p. 49 |
| at the suppression, February 1796 | 39,999,945,428 | p. 54 n. |
What a gold coin cost
The louis d’or is the honest measure, because its metal content never changed. Its face value was twenty-five francs throughout.
Logarithmic scale — each gridline is ten times the one below
| When | Cost in paper | Page |
|---|---|---|
| 1 August 1795 | 920 | p. 50 |
| 1 September 1795 | 1,200 | p. 50 |
| 1 November 1795 | 2,600 | p. 50 |
| 1 December 1795 | 3,050 | p. 50 |
| February 1796 — one franc in gold for 288 in paper | 7,200 | p. 50 |
| the last quotation of all — one franc in gold for 600 in paper | 15,000 | p. 54 |
And what a note fetched
Linear scale — 100 is the note's face value
Prices, before and after
The dollar amounts below are the conversion printed in the book: a table published in 1795 and “reduced to American coinage,” carried into White’s revision of 1912–14. They are not modern dollars, they are not inflation-adjusted, and nothing on this site re-converts them. Treated as modern money they would be wrong by roughly two orders of magnitude in the wrong direction.
Logarithmic scale — brass 1790, vermilion 1795
| Article | 1790 | 1795 |
|---|---|---|
| A bushel of flour | 40 cents | 45 dollars |
| A bushel of oats | 18 cents | 10 dollars |
| A cartload of wood | 4 dollars | 500 dollars |
| A bushel of coal | 7 cents | 2 dollars |
| A pound of sugar | 18 cents | 12½ dollars |
| A pound of soap | 18 cents | 8 dollars |
| A pound of candles | 18 cents | 8 dollars |
| One cabbage | 8 cents | 5½ dollars |
| A pair of shoes | 1 dollar | 40 dollars |
| Twenty-five eggs | 24 cents | 5 dollars |
| Before the close of 1795 and during 1796 these looked moderate.A pound of bread, 9 dollars; a bushel of potatoes, 40 dollars; a pound of candles, 40 dollars; a cartload of wood, 250 dollars. p. 59 | ||
The same collapse, in francs
| Article | Price | Page |
|---|---|---|
| A pound of sugar | 500 francs | p. 50 |
| A pound of soap | 230 francs | p. 50 |
| A pound of candles | 140 francs | p. 50 |
| A pound of butter | 560 francs | p. 51 |
| A turkey | 900 francs | p. 51 |
| A carriage for a single drive | 600 francs | p. 50 |
| A carriage for an entire day | 6,000 francs | p. 50 |
| A measure of flour, 1790 → 1795 | 2 → 225 francs | p. 50 |
| A pair of shoes, 1790 → 1795 | 5 → 200 francs | p. 50 |
| A hat, 1790 → 1795 | 14 → 500 francs | p. 51 |
| Good bread, May 1796 | 80 francs a pound (16 dollars) | p. 60 |
The wage
The day's wage in the summer of 1792, after every issue so far — the same fifteen sous it had been four years earlier. Manufactures had closed and so many labourers had been drafted into the army that, White writes, the draft is what kept wages from falling further. p. 35
Two further figures belong here and have no chart. A man who borrowed ten thousand francs in 1790 could discharge the debt in 1796 for about thirty-five francs p. 51. And a hardware manufacturer who retired in 1790 with 321,000 livres found his property worth 14,000 francs in 1796 p. 59.