strike for higher wages. It is equally futile to say that finished products have risen because the raw materials have risen; or that the raw materials have risen because finished products have risen.
Such explanations are as unsatisfactory as the answer of the gardener who, when asked, "Where is the hoe?" replied, "It's with the rake," and when asked, "Where is the rake?" replied, "It's with the hoe." Such alleged explanations were shrewdly caricatured by the cartoon showing many persons standing in a circle, each accusing his neighbor: the consumer blaming the retailer; the retailer, the wholesaler; the wholesaler, the middleman; the middleman, the manufacturer; the manufacturer, the workman; the workman, the trust; while (to complete the circle) the trust blames the extravagant consumer.
It is true that individual prices do react on one another in thousands of ways. But the several pushes and pulls among individual prices are not what raises them as a group. Such forces within the group could not move the group itself any more than a man can raise himself from the ground by tugging at his bootstraps. We cannot explain the rise or fall of a raft on the ocean by observing how one log in the raft is linked to the others and is pulled up or down by them. It is true that some prices rise more promptly than others and give the proximate reason for raising the others. The whole raft of prices is bound together and its parts creak and groan to make the needed adjustments.[1] But such readjustments between prices do not explain why the whole raft of prices has risen.
- ↑ For further discussion of this point, see § 15 below and Chapter III. §§ 13 and 14.
