History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life. (Continued.)
C. Those raw materials which, from the very first, have been obtained by
the means of production properly so called, maintain a much greater
uniformity in price. In the lower stages of civilization, they are never
found permanently in excess; and as the economy of a people advances, the
growing dearth of natural forces may be more or less counterbalanced by
the greater cheapness of capital and labor. This is true, especially of
wheat. (See § 129, and Roscher, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, p.
43.)(809)
D. In the case also of those raw materials which are objects of
occupation, and never of real production, as, for instance, minerals, a
progressive public economy, by altering the different elements of price in
an opposite direction, may leave their price on the whole unchanged. Here,
indeed, the discovery of new and especially of rich natural stores may
exert an incalculable influence; but such “accidents” underlie the laws of
human development only to the extent that those ages which are
intellectually most active are those also which are most industrious and
fortunate in the discovery of their natural resources.(810)