Economic necessity

“ However, when it will not be possible to generate a surplus in the magnitude that will suffice to cover our requirements for economic development we shall not be limited to the mere extent of such a surplus. ”

“ That stability must, of course, take into consideration the right of labor to have a living wage. Higher wages built on high and efficient production provide purchasing power for goods and start the cycle of production for consumption, which should be the goal of our economic development. ”

“ Political economy requires farther expansion in order to include all the elements of this great social problem.
It is a true doctrine that demand and supply regulate the price of all things, labour included. ”

“ Thus it has been urged that by devotion to industry and by consuming less than was produced, the time would come when the world would be so well equipped that none of its workers would have to be in want of the economic essentials of a satisfactory life. ”

“ Our courts of justice, our financial institutions, our methods of trade, and our schools of all grades are examples of social harmonies which found their form by long conflict, and settled down to smooth action by custom. The financial institutions and the methods of trade belong to the economic system. The system of production is modern and new. ”

“ Whatever merits it has consist in its possible ability to promote the national economic interest in a progressively improving general standard of living, in a higher standard of individual work, and in a general efficiency of labor. ”

“ With natural opportunities thus set free to labour, with capital and improvements exempt from tax and exchange released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labour into the things they want would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms which paralyse industry would cease; every wheel of production would be set in motion; trade would increase in every direction and wealth augment on every hand. ”

“ In the case before us the question of principle involves many considerations—aesthetic, political, social, even religious. These will be glanced at in their proper place; but for our present purpose they are all subordinate to the one great paramount consideration—the economic one. In the world of affairs experience shows that, given a demand of any kind whatever, as between an economical method of supplying that demand and a non-economical method, in the long run the economical method will surely prevail. ”

“ There is great need, also, that the expense of living should be reduced while the standards of living shall not be lowered. The business world has been trying to secure economies in production; there is even greater need of economies in distribution. ”

“ In studying the law which would govern economic society if no essential economic changes were taking place,—in reducing society, as it were, to a static state,—we find that there is a certain set of characteristics which land shares with those capital goods which are the products of human industry. ”

“ At the present day, within the body economic, one can truck not only commodities for commodities, but commodities for human labour,—and for human rights as well, and all by the very same economic process. ”

“ Of such cases, the argument to show that Demand for Commodities is not Demand for Labor, the Doctrine of International Values, and the Effect of the Progress of Society on wages, profits, and rent, are examples. ”

“ Here are four indispensable requirements—the maintenance of human values, the preservation of group integrity and permanence, productive efficiency and self-generated activity—for the building and successful continuance of economically sound unit groups. If society is to secure maximum returns, if the economic mechanism is to yield its largest quota of goods and services to mankind, the units out of which [Pg 81] society is built must meet these requirements which constitute four of the essential pre-requisites to the success of any economic experiment. ”

“ Economic conditions require readjustment, important matters of trade must be regulated, vital questions of finance and taxation must be handled, in fact, the whole country must settle down to production, manufacture, distribution of merchandise, and the transaction of the nation’s regular business. ”

“ Fair exchange above laws.—Under perfect freedom of exchange, the general law of supply and demand already illustrated is more effective than any laws can be in adjusting wages or profit to efforts in production, and in adjusting interest or rent or both to the capital employed or to other means of production controlled. ”

“ Resources were limitless; without enterprise, without labor and capital, without transportation they had no value, they were free goods. The great public task of the nineteenth century was to settle the continent and make these resources available for mankind. ”

“ Since the division of labor was introduced, and especially since the great inventions multiplied indefinitely the powers of man, production has been practically limited only by the demand created by consumption. ”

“ That provisions and labour should become dear by the increase of trade and money is, in many respects, an inconvenience; but an inconvenience that is unavoidable, and the effect of that public wealth and prosperity which are the end of all our wishes. ”

“ May not the values destroyed, and to be recreated, in the form of trade connections, social organization, accomplished adjustments, and the like, be greater than the new values to be gained by better adaptation of industry to the physical resources or the capacities of the labor supply, of the country? ”

“ The question of the play of economic forces thus generally reduces itself to a problem which may be thus stated: What are the conditions of industrial equilibrium? How must prices, rates of wages, and profit be related in order that the various classes concerned may receive such proportions of produce as are compatible with the maintenance of the existing system of organisation? If any specified change occurs, if production becomes easier or more difficult, if a tax be imposed, or a regulation of any kind affects previous conditions, what changes will be necessary to restore the equilibrium? ”

“ That is the economic problem of the next century—how to get the goods from the farm to the people with the lowest possible expenditure of effort; how to get the manufactured product from the factory to the house with the least possible expense. I have an idea that we have too many stores, too many middlemen, too much waste motion. So that I have only two thoughts to suggest: The first is that the ultimate problem is to substitute some adequate philosophy or religion for that which we have lost; and the second is to concentrate on the simple economic problem. ”

“ Let it practice true and conscientious economy, not only in the expenditure and application of public moneys, but also in the method of levying them, so as to be equally just to all classes and all economical interests. ”

“ The Economic Function.—The nation has an economic function. It is its business to encourage trade by means that seem most likely to help, whether by subsidies, tariffs, or expert advice; to protect all producers, distributers, and consumers by just laws and tribunals, so that unfair privileges shall not be enjoyed by the few at the expense of the many, and to provide in every legitimate way for the spread of information and for experimentation that agriculture, mining, and manufacturing may be improved. ”

“ In our endeavors to sustain labor, and equalize its opportunities with capital, we have gone much further than this. We hold that all public necessities of general demand, in the supplying of which large expenditures are required in fixed capital, and which are not strictly in the line of production, should be provided for by the government. ”

“ The powers of wealth, the force of example, opinion, authority, laws, of every concentrated influence that can be brought to bear upon human affairs, have, all combined, been directed to a reduction of the price of labour, and consequently to diminishing the consumption of the products of human industry; for the great mass of mankind have nothing but the fruits of their labour to offer in exchange for those products which are necessary to their subsistence and comfort. ”

“ A strong case can be made out against the cheerful assumption that, the nineteenth century having attended to the questions of production, exchange, rapid locomotion and communication, markets for surplus goods, and the opening of vast tracts of territory, the twentieth will be free and willing to turn its atten- tion to the question of fair distribution of wealth, and the removal of unnecessary and unjust poverty. ”

“ The savings of labor which have fallen so largely into the hands of the few, making them rich men, have built our railroads, steamships, telegraphs, manufactories, thus in many ways adding to the means of production, and the facilities of commerce at home and abroad. These saved earnings in the hands of men seeking investment for profit have increased the wealth, resources, and refinements of civilization, made abundance possible, and brought it within reach of all, except the unfortunate, or the indolent and improvident. ”

“ Therefore society as a whole must take possession of industrial capital, production for use must be substituted for production for profit, work at a good wage must be guaranteed to every one who asks for it, and the fair distribution of wealth among the workers must be regarded as of more primary importance than the quantity which is produced. ”

“ Has the progress of wealth and industry no effect in regard to cost of production, but to diminish it? Are no causes of an opposite character brought into operation by the same progress, sufficient in some cases not only to neutralize, but to overcome the former, and convert the descending movement of cost of production into an ascending movement? ”

“ But as soon as it becomes a question of obtaining, instead of a certain mass of products, the production at any cost of surplus-value, the incessant multiplication of money, the possessor of the means of production strives relentlessly to make those means of production absorb the greatest possible quantity of surplus-labor. ”

“ The time has come when the nation must consider the nature of its resources, and study its own development. We must see to it that the demand for houses, the primary demand of a civilized man, is answered, not by the speculative builder, but by the nation itself. ”

“ The government should, by general enactments, encourage the development of our agricultural, mineral, mechanical, manufacturing, and commercial resources, to the end that labor may be fully and profitably employed ”

“ For, it is only with the produce of its labor and capital that one country can demand, or can obtain, in exchange, the produce of the labor and capital of another. The idea that the lowering of wages can increase, or the increase of wages can diminish, the trade of a country, is as baseless as the idea that the prosperity of a country can be increased by taxes on imports, or diminished by the removal of restrictions on trade. ”

“ Economy without industry will barely appear in a whole coat; industry without economy will appear in rags. The first is detrimental to the community, by preventing the circulation of property; the last is detrimental to itself. It is a singular remark, that even industry is sometimes the way to poverty. ”

“ The labourer may obtain greater comforts; wages in kind real wages may rise. Or the progress of population may force down cultivation to inferior soils, and more costly processes; thus raising the cost of production, the value, and the price, of the chief articles of the labourer's consumption. On either of these suppositions, the rate of profit will fall. ”

“ Irrespective of the increase of population, the effect of improvements in methods of production and exchange is to increase rent.... The effect of labor-saving improvements will be to increase the production of wealth. Now, for the production of wealth, two things are required, labor and land. ”

“ We have surveyed the field of economical facts, and have examined how they stand related to one another as causes and effects; what circumstances determine the amount of production, of employment for labour, of capital and population; what laws regulate rent, profits, and wages; under what conditions and in what proportions commodities are interchanged between individuals and between countries. We have thus obtained a collective view of the economical phenomena of society, considered as existing simultaneously. ”

“ Every feature of the competitive system of production and distribution was appropriately illustrated, together with the inevitable consequences to the people; wealth beyond the dreams of avarice for a favored few and hopeless poverty and degradation for the many. ”

“ And hence the necessity of our labor, and through our labor accumulate capital instead of needless expenditures, exhausting the results of our labors and getting us into debt. Learn to live within our means that there may be a little increase, that we may have something wherewith to purchase improved machinery, and extend our industries until we shall be able to supply our every need. ”

“ In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. ”

“ Trade, finance and commerce, by producing a regular flow of abundant income, brought into existence a new field of occupations and a new class--business and the businessmen. Herdsmen and farmers depended for their livelihood on nature, her niggardliness or generosity. The businessmen required only the presence of a group large enough to purchase goods and services, pay rent and interest, work for wages and leave the profits to the enterpriser. Each profit beyond the subsistence level enabled the businessmen to expand, buying more goods, hiring more labor, making still greater profits. ”