The sole piece of evidence, from which probable conclusions may be drawn, is that three separate measurements of price fluctuations over some forty years reveal a growing unsteadiness of late, whether they be expressed absolutely or as percentages of price.
It is evident that the buying of cotton on the principles suggested would be calculated to cause great unsteadiness of prices, especially as cotton is not continuously forthcoming, but is produced periodically in harvests.
For example, in a machine-work, the steam-engine, which is the prime mover of the various tools, has a flywheel on the crank-shaft to store and restore the periodical excess of energy arising from the variations in the effort exerted by the connecting-rod upon the crank; and each of the slotting machines, punching machines, riveting machines, and other tools has a flywheel of its own to store and restore energy, so as to enable the very different resistances opposed to those tools at different times to be overcome without too great unsteadiness of motion.
Unsteadiness when standing still and deterioration of position sense is common.
To obviate the unsteadiness of motion which this tends to cause, the shafts are provided with a second set of cranks at right angles to the first, connected by means of a similar coupling-rod, so that one set of cranks pass their dead points at the instant when the other set are farthest from theirs.