History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life. (Continued.)
E. The products of industry become cheaper and cheaper as economic culture
advances; whereas, for instance, in England, towards the end of the middle
ages, a single shirt was considered of importance enough to be made not
unfrequently an object of testamentary bequest.(811) And, indeed, the
price of industrial products sinks lower the more important the part
played in their production by capital and the division of labor is as
compared with the part played by the raw material.(812) On this account,
in recent times, fine cloths have grown, relatively speaking, much cheaper
than coarse ones.(813) Lead, which during the middle ages in England was
much cheaper than iron, because of the difficulty of mining the latter,
has become much dearer in our days.(814) Conversely, where raw material
plays the most important part in manufactures, the price of the
manufactured article may increase with an advance in civilization. Hence,
articles made of wood are procured at the cheapest rates in mountainous
countries, where the division of labor is not carried very far, but where
the raw material is cheap.(815)
F. But the price of commodities decreases, especially in the higher stages
of civilization, to the extent that it is dependent on commerce.(816) Here
capital and human labor almost exclusively are effective, and the modern
improvements of communication, legal security and competition are
especially striking.(817)
G. Since personal services are, as a rule, performed and received only by
individuals, the principle in accordance with which labor in general
becomes cheaper in the higher stages of civilization, does not apply to
them to any great extent.(818) Yet we may claim that advancing
civilization has pretty universally a twofold influence on the price paid
for personal services. In the first place, freedom of competition, with
the more accurate and equitable determination of price which it produces
(in contradistinction to servitude, privilege and custom) always tends to
obtain the upper hand; and further, by the growing combination of labor
and of use (§§ 56, ff. 207), a better and better and more clearly defined
gradation between ordinary services and those of a higher order is
effected. When the latter cannot be increased at pleasure, the price paid
for them may, as the wealth of consumers increases, become, from motives
of vanity or of custom (_Gebrauchsgründen_), almost unlimited. The dancing
maid, to whom Herod (Mark, 6, 23) promised even the half of his kingdom,
is both in a politico-economical and in a moral sense a warning example to
over-refined nations.(819)