Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 2Roscher, Wilhelm
General
Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 2
Roscher, Wilhelm
Economics
[Footnote 197-4: Compare _J. Mill_, Anfangsgründe der polit.
Oekonomie, Jacob's translation, § 13 ff.; _McCulloch_,
Principles, III, 6. _Adam Smith_ was of opinion, that higher
wages enhanced the price of commodities in an arithmetical
ratio, a higher rate of interest in a geometrical one (I,
ch. 9). Similarly _Child_, Discourse of Trade, 38. This last
_Kraus_, Staatswirthschaft, better expresses by saying that
an increase in the rate of interest operates in the ratio of
the compounded interests.]
SECTION CXCVIII.
REMEDY IN CASE ONE FACTOR OF PRODUCTION HAS BECOME DEARER.
When one of the three branches of income has grown as compared with the
others; in other words, when the factor of production which it
represents has become relatively dearer, it is to the interest of the
undertaker and of the public, that it should be replaced where possible
by another and cheaper productive force. (§ 47.) On this depends the
advantageousness of _intensive_ agriculture (high farming) in every
higher stage of civilization. There land is dear and labor cheap. Hence,
efforts are made to get along with the least amount of land-surface, and
this minimum of land is made more productive by a number of expedients
in cultivation, by manuring it, by seed-corn, etc., of course also by
the employment of journeymen laborers, oxen, etc. And since the price of
land is intimately connected with the price of most raw material,
remains are here saved as much as possible, often with a great deal of
trouble.[198-1] In a lower stage of civilization, such savings would be
considered extravagance. As land is here cheap, and capital dear, it is
necessary to carry on the cultivation of land _extensively_; that is,
save in capital and labor, and allow the factor nature to perform the
most possible. The clearing up of untilled land, or the draining of
swampy land etc., would be frequently injurious here; for it would
require the use of a very large amount of capital to obtain land of
comparatively little value.
In large cities, it is customary to build houses high in proportion to
the dearness of the land.[198-2] Thus, in England, where the rate of
interest is low and wages high, labor is readily supplanted by capital.
In countries like the East Indies or China, the reverse is the case. I
need only call attention to the palanquins used in Asia instead of
carriages; to the men who in South America carried ore down eighteen
hundred steps to the smelting furnaces,[198-3] and, on the other hand,
to the "elevators," so much in favor in England, which are used in
factories to carry people from one story to another inside to save them
the trouble of going up stairs.[198-4]
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