Section CXXXI.
History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life. (Continued.)
A. In the case of a great many raw materials, we repeatedly find the following to be the course of development. In the lower stages of civilization, they grow of themselves, and in such quantities that a small amount of labor, and that only the labor of occupation, more than suffices to satisfy the small demand for them. Here, naturally enough, the price of raw materials is very low. After this, it rises with every advance made in civilization, for two reasons: first, because the demand becomes greater and greater; and then, because the naturally free sources of production, called into requisition by other wants, now flow less and less abundantly.[793] This rise in price continues until the point is reached at which it becomes customary, instead of the mere occupation of the free gifts of nature, to bring forth the commodities in question by the more [pg 392] laborious process of production proper. From this time forward, the usual seeking of prices for a level requires that our commodity should, like all others which suppose an equal sacrifice of the means of production, claim an equal value in exchange. If from any peculiar causes, the production of this commodity is not at all possible, or if it is capable of no great extension, its price, which would under the circumstances, be limited only by the purchasing power of the buyer, might attain the utmost extreme reached in prices under the spur of vanity or of the mere love of the commodity itself. The latter is true especially in the case of venison;[794] the former, in the case of the tame cattle,[795] fresh-water fish,[796] and wood.[797][798]
Section CXXXII.
History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life. (Continued.)
B. The rise in prices is observed earliest in that class of goods in question which by reason of their small volume and [pg 394] their comparatively great value, and by reason of the greater capacity to be kept in a state of preservation for a longer time, are best adapted to seeking a more favorable market. This applies particularly to the skins, fleece, hair, feathers, [pg 395] teeth, horns, etc., of animals, in which, in the breeding of stock, etc. people in a low stage of civilization are much more apt to speculate than in their meat. Here it is considered, and rightly so, to be much more profitable to raise many animals which are badly cared for, than a few, that are well cared for; for the care bestowed on animals has, as a rule, much more influence on the body itself than on their covering.[799] In fisheries, [pg 396] caviar, sturgeon-bladders, oil and whalebone;[800] and in forest-culture, [pg 397] pitch, tar, potash and, to some extent, building material etc., play the same part.[801]
Conversely, the price of those portions which are most difficult of transportation, by reason of their volume or of the difficulty of preserving them, rises latest. To this category belongs milk, the production of which in a fresh state can be made an object of economic speculation, only where civilization is at its very highest, and especially in the vicinity of large cities.[802] It is indeed possible by its transformation into butter or cheese to preserve milk and make it capable of [pg 398] transportation. But to carry on such a business for the purposes of trade, a care and a cleanliness are needed which are national characteristics only of a highly civilized people (§ 229), and the preparation of a superior quality of cheese, which is always a very long process, is conditioned by the employment of capital long in advance of a return, and which no poor nation is in a condition to make.[803] Cows are primarily milk-producing animals.[804] Hence their price, as a rule, rises later than that of oxen, but, in the higher stages of civilization, it rises much more surprisingly. Something analogous is true of those products which result from what remains after the production of other goods or commodities. As long as this alone supplies the demand, the cost of production of the former commodity is almost nothing, and hence its price is very low. For this reason hogs are relatively cheap in two very different periods of a people's national economy, in a very low stage of civilization where forests are plentiful and they are fattened on acorns and the nuts of the beech, and also when they may be considered as a collateral product of some great industry, such as distilleries and dairy-farming; and when raised by a numerous, especially a rural population of small means and laborers, in order to turn to advantage, in the former instance, the remains of production, and in the latter of consumption.[805] Where neither of these two reasons obtains, [pg 399] the price of hogs is wont to increase largely with an advance in civilization.[806][807][808] (See Roscher, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, §§ 177 ff.)