But it remains questionable, and in all manner of ways questionable, whether I choose to give so much.[1]
This choice is always a relative one. It is a choice to give a price for this, rather than for
- ↑ Price has been already defined (p. 10) to be the quantity
population. Cheapness of this kind is merely the discovery that more men can be maintained on the same ground; and the question how many you will maintain in proportion to your additional means, remains exactly in the same terms that it did before.
A form of immediate cheapness results, however, in many cases, without distress, from the labour of a population where food is redundant, or where the labour by which the food is produced leaves much idle time on their hands, which may be applied to the production of "cheap" articles. All such phenomena indicate to the political economist places where the labour is unbalanced. In the first case, the just balance is to be effected by taking labourers from the spot where pressure exists, and sending them to that where food is redundant. In the second, the cheapness is a local accident, advantageous to the local purchaser, disadvantageous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of commerce to extend the market, and thus give the local producer his full advantage.Cheapness caused by natural accidents of harvest, weather, etc., is always counterbalanced, in due time, by natural scarcity, similarly caused. It is the part of wise government, and healthy commerce, so to provide in times and places of plenty for times and places of dearth, as that there shall never
be waste, nor famine.Cheapness caused by gluts of the market is merely a disease of clumsy and wanton commerce.
