The fragility of cultivated quality: How global commerce undermines local excellence

“ The hills are generally excessively steep, a great proportion of them barren; the rest in vines principally, sometimes small patches of corn. In the plains, though rich, I observed they dung their vines plentifully; and it is observed here, as elsewhere, that the plains yield much wine, but bad. The good is furnished from the hills. The walnut, willow, and apple tree beginning to leaf.
Andernach is the port on the Rhine to which the famous mill-stones of Cologne are brought; the quarry, as some say, being at Mendich, three or four leagues from thence. ”

“ That the planters of the United States have the remedy in their own hands; that remedy being the reduction of area, this reduction to result, from the employment of the means here suggested, in increased crops; and, paradoxical as it may seem, these increased crops to bring greatly enhanced values.
“The whole world wants good tobacco, and will pay well for it. Scarcely a people on earth seeks poor tobacco or will buy it at any price.
“In a word, then, one acre must be made to yield what it has hitherto taken two or three acres to produce ”

“ An Hogshead of sharp Vinegar, out of which, if you should draw all the Vinegar, leaving only the fæces or Lees, and should by degrees pour into it noble and generous Wine, the Wine would be plainly corrupted by those few fæces. Even so it is with those fixed Diseases, which have taken such deep root in the humane body, that they cannot be taken away neither by Purging, Bleeding, nor Sweating, nor by outward Anointings. ”

“ The roller process has almost entirely driven out all other processes. Now and then we see by the roadside an old fashioned mill with the upper and nether stone, but we seldom see one that is prosperous and thriving. Millers, like everybody else in these days, do business on a large scale and to make flour on a large scale they must use the roller-mill. Thus the hole in the rock in which a handful of grain was laboriously crushed has, through long ages of growth, become the great factory in which thousands of barrels of flour are made in a day. ”

“ If, therefore, the deficiency of hands for the rural operations, and the small internal consumption of the productions, be, in Peru, insuperable obstacles to the progress of agriculture; that which is opposed to the external commerce, by the distance of the country, by its local situation, and by the want of canals, bridges, and roads, to facilitate the traffic, and reduce the expences of the carriage and transport, is not less so. Without these resources, to aid the sales and exports of the superfluous commodities, there can be neither commerce, culture, nor communication. ”

“ Since May 1, 1951, the railroads have refused to pay an allowance to the Army for the wharfage and handling [1] services the Army performs on military export traffic passing through Army base piers in Norfolk, Virginia. The railroads have assumed in their tariffs the obligation to furnish these accessorial services for all shippers that comply with their tariffs. And, in accordance with these tariffs, the railroads have furnished the services for commercial shippers at public sections of the same piers without additional charge. ”

“ A large amount of private commercial traffic continued over the released portions of the piers, and the railroads continued to absorb the cost of that wharfage and handling by paying Stevenson & Young $1.00 per ton of freight.
The result of the Army's insistence on operating its own pier facilities is that the Army pays the same export rates without receiving wharfage and handling services as commercial shippers do for whom the railroads provide those services at no additional charge. ”

“ The consumer is rich in proportion as he buys at a low price. He buys at a low price in proportion to the abundance of the article in demand; abundance then enriches him. This reasoning extended to all consumers must lead to the theory of abundance!
It is the imperfectly understood notion of exchange of produce which leads to these fallacies. If we consult our individual interest, we perceive immediately that it is double. As sellers we are interested in high prices, consequently in scarcity. As buyers our advantage is in cheapness, or what is the same thing, abundance. ”

“ Many individuals cite selfish profit seekers for environmental degradation, rather than laying much of the blame - where it belongs - to misplaced incentives in the economic system. Progress in environmental problems is impossible without a clearer understanding of how the economic system works in the environment and what alternatives are available to take away the many roadblocks to environmental quality.
Our price system fails to take into account the environmental damage that the polluter inflicts on others. Economists call these damages - which are very real - "external social costs." ”

“ It has, moreover, been found by many years’ experience, that whilst the quality of the tobacco cultivated in most parts of Prussia is not such as to enable the growers to compete successfully with the importers of foreign, particularly North American sorts, the labour 158attending its cultivation and its preparation for the market, as well as the uncertainty of only an average crop, are out of proportion, as a rule, to the average profits arising therefrom. ”

“ When the plantations are out of proportion to the strength of the labour which can be counted on, all the work becomes slowly and badly done, and these faults most sensibly prejudice both the yield and the quality of the crop, and consequently the interest of the planter. ”

“ Vast natural systems may be severely damaged by the improvident intervention of man. The great Dust Bowl of the 1930's was born in the overuse of land resources. Many estuarine areas have been altered and their ecology permanently changed. On a global scale, air pollution could trigger large-scale climatic changes. Man may also be changing the forces in the atmosphere through deforestation, urban construction, and the spilling of oil on ocean waters. ”

“ They reflect the ability of one entity, e.g., a company, to use water or air as a free resource for waste disposal, while others pay the cost in contaminated air or water. If there were a way to make the price structure shoulder these external costs - taxing the firm for the amount of discharge, for instance - then the price for the goods and services produced would reflect these costs. Failing this, goods whose production spawn pollution are greatly underpriced because the purchaser does not pay for pollution abatement that would prevent environment damage. ”

“ The major environmental problems of today began with the Industrial Revolution. Belching smoke from factory stacks and the dumping of raw industrial wastes into rivers became the readily identified, but generally ignored hallmarks of "progress" and production. They are no longer ignored, but the extraordinary growth of the American economy continues to outpace the efforts to deal with its unwanted by-products. ”

“ The bill lately passed in England, prohibiting the business of this country with France from passing through the medium of England, is a temporary embarrassment to our commerce, from the unhappy predicament of its all hanging on the pivot of London. It will be happy for us, should it be continued till our merchants may establish connections in the countries in which our produce is consumed, and to which it should go directly. ”

“ The Commission drew from the above circumstances a conclusion that the tariffs and conduct of the railroads are not shown to have been unlawful.
The United States argues that carriers cannot perform accessorial services in such a way that 'some shippers would pay an identical line-haul rate for less service than that required by other industrial plants.' United States v. ”

“ It is discrimination or unfairness in the tariffs that calls for correction. United States v. United States Smelting, Refining & Min. Co., 339 U.S. 186, 194-197, 70 S.Ct. 537, 542, 543, 94 L.Ed. 750. Such determinations are on a case-by-case basis. See, e.g., United States v. Wabash R. Co., 321 U.S. 403, 64 S.Ct. 752, 88 L.Ed. 827.↑ It called for performance of 'all terminal and pier warehouse intransit storage services excluding physical plant facilities (piers, warehouses, etc.) ; all checking and clerking services in connection therewith; all policing (sweeping and cleaning) services ”

“ The difference between a public and a private pier under the tariffs is whether the railroads have control of the areas directly or through their agents, or whether the shipper or consignee has control.
There is no objection to such a practice generally, whether the line-haul rates and the handling rates are stated in a single factor rate or separately. To require the carriers to furnish such accessorial services at every private pier would disperse the traffic, cause the maintenance of more crews or watchmen, and thus add to the cost of transportation. ”

“ At the same time, it ill becomes us as a Free-trading nation to shut out any class of our own countrymen, by duties distinctly prohibitive, from following a branch of agriculture which they think they could make profitable. It is against our principle to offer a bounty on the forced cultivation of exotics, such as tobacco undoubtedly is when grown in these islands, but it would be still worse to maintain, on merely pedantic grounds, a prohibitive import on a crop which many men think the 166smaller tenants could produce to the great advantage of their holdings. ”

“ But soon comes competition, and the price of coal and iron falls, until this gift of Nature becomes gratuitous to all, and human labor is only paid according to the general rate of profits.
Thus natural advantages, like improvements in the process of production, are, or have a constant tendency to become, under the law of competition, the common and gratuitous patrimony of consumers, of society, of mankind. Countries therefore which do not enjoy these advantages, must gain by commerce with those which do; because the exchanges of commerce are between labor and labor ”

“ Their produce representing less labor, receives less recompense; in other words, is cheaper. If then all the liberality of Nature results in cheapness, it is evidently not the producing, but the consuming country, which profits by her benefits.
Hence we may see the enormous absurdity of the consuming country, which rejects produce precisely because it is cheap. It is as though we should say: "We will have nothing of that which Nature gives you. You ask of us an effort equal to two, in order to furnish ourselves with articles only attainable at home by an effort equal to four. ”

“ Again, when any article, as coal, iron, cheese, or cloth, comes to us from foreign countries with less labor than if we produced it ourselves, the difference in price is a gratuitous gift conferred upon us; and the gift is more or less considerable, according as the difference is greater or less. It is the quarter, the half, or the three-quarters of the value of the produce, in proportion as the foreign merchant requires the three-quarters, the half, or the quarter of the price. It is as complete as possible when the producer offers, as the sun does with light, the whole in free gift. ”

“ The low price in foreign markets, for a series of years past, of agricultural produce, of wheat generally, of tobacco most commonly, and the accumulation of duties on the articles of consumption not produced within our State, not only disable the farmer or planter from adding to his farm by purchase, but reduce him to sell his own, and remove to the western country, glutting the market he leave’s, while he lessens the number of bidders. ”

“ The troubles in the East have been produced by English agitators, operating on the selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain. The inordinate extent given it among us by our becoming the factors of the whole world, has enabled it to control the agricultural and manufacturing interests. ”

“ The number of importers has been augmented in a very considerable degree; but the consumption having been invariably the same, the competition they have entered into has obliged them to endeavour to lighten themselves, at a loss even, of a heavy burthen which they could not transport elsewhere. Let the importations be once brought to the level of the annual produce, and there will cease to be any complaints against the useful and profitable system of a free trade. ”

“ If they exceed their consumption, the importers are subjected to the losses inseparable from an overwhelming abundance, which, by a natural principle, lowers the estimation and price of every commercial effect.
This constant axiom, which is alike supported by theory and practice, appears to be clearly demonstrated by the present state of the commerce of the viceroyalty of Peru. Its annual produce in gold, silver, and other effects, as has been already shewn, amounts to little more than five millions of piastres. ”

“ But now, after a fine harvest, and with wheat at 41s. a quarter, we are importing annually, as our average amount, fifteen millions of quarters of foreign grain! How are the most terrible commercial disasters to be averted, if this immense amount receives any augmentation from bad seasons? Nay, how are they to be averted even in ordinary seasons, with so immense a drain on the metallic resources of the country? This is a question in which the mercantile classes are far more interested than the agricultural—for with them a monetary crisis is an affair of life and death. ”

“ As men are, a natural competition among buyers and sellers is just as needful to keep up the quality of goods as to keep down their price. Good quality always costs more of effort and skill and capital than bad quality: why should producers continue to furnish good quality to a market from which a free competition in good qualities is excluded by law? Every tendency of human nature, as well as every relevant fact in history, attests, that poor wares at high rates invariably attends upon tariff-monopolies. ”

“ In the second, the cheapness is a local accident, advantageous to the local purchaser, disadvantageous to the local producer. It is one of the first duties of commerce to extend the market, and thus give the local producer his full advantage.
Cheapness caused by natural accidents of harvest, weather, etc., is always counterbalanced, in due time, by natural scarcity, similarly caused. ”

“ 'Quantity in food,' she used to say, 'was more to be regarded than quality; that a full meal was the great enemy both to study and industry: that a well-built house required but little repairs.'
But this moderation in her diet, she enjoyed, with a delicate frame of body, a fine state of health; ”

“ Indeed it seems to me that in proportion as commercial avarice and corruption advance on us from the north and east, the principles of free government are to retire to the agricultural states of the south and west, as their last asylum and bulwark. With honesty and self-government for her portion, agriculture may abandon contentedly to others the fruits of commerce and corruption. Accept, I pray you, the assurances of my great esteem and respect. ”