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 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, 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, caviar, sturgeon-bladders, oil and whalebone;(800) and in
forest-culture, 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 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, the price of
hogs is wont to increase largely with an advance in
civilization.(806)(807)(808) (See Roscher, Nationalökonomik des
Ackerbaues, §§ 177 ff.)