Economic relations

“ Economists argue against government restrictions on trade and manufacture.
The economists wrote treatises on taxation, scattered pamphlets about, and conducted a magazine or two. They not only brought the existing economic evils home to the intelligent reader, but suggested remedies for them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is specially true of the domain of economic production; for it is mainly on account of its connection with the production and distribution of wealth that political government excites so much popular interest and forms the subject of so much vehement controversy. And in every other domain of human activity equally, we shall find that the interests, the endeavours, and the disputes of men have an economic process as their basis, or economic progress as their object. The processes of production and commerce are, in fact, the central processes of every nation’s life. ”

“ But further, they have a distinct social and economic aim, namely, to correct the present inequalities of wealth, and substitute for the competitive system an industry controlled by all in the common interest, and distributing on principles of equity and reason, mutually agreed on, the wealth produced. ”

“ The fundamental basis for the maintenance of national standards of living is adequate production, economical distribution, and fair apportionment among the various economic groups which constitute our society. ”

“ They saw men cooperating in the production of goods, the fruits of this cooperation divided among the participants, the products themselves change hands from one person to another before they were used directly for the satisfaction of desire. In other words, they saw the economic sequence of production, exchange, distribution and consumption, and it became the object of political economy to discover the conditions and rules under which these phenomena were enacted in the daily affairs of men. ”

“ Trade-unions have funds in various securities; friendly societies are large capitalists; and many individuals eke out their wages by invested savings. All this increases the difficulty of any clear-cut radical change in our economic system. ”

“ Throughout the book economic principles are discussed with special reference to American conditions, and their workings are illustrated by frequent allusions to American experience. The subjects of wealth, its consumption, production, and distribution, exchange, money, credit, bimetallism, monopolies, international trade, wages, land nationalization and socialism, and the economic functions of Government are thus treated ”

“ I saw a business system which had grown up under free competition and equality of opportunity passing into trusts and other combines derived from the acquisition of lands containing the best supplies of coal, iron, oil, and other important raw materials, supported by railroad and banking connections and by tariffs directed against outside competition. ”

“ Many economic writers have characterized the processes of exchange as "non-productive" activities, nevertheless, under the present economic order they lie closer to the seat of power than any other single group of activities. ”

“ And it must not be forgotten that this trade has developed into a great and growing business, actuated by exactly the same economic interests as any other business. [315] With the agencies making so much per day for each man employed, the way to improve business is to get more men employed. ”

“ It will be seen that all questions of finance and commerce are intimately connected, while those of labor and capital grow out of the conditions they make possible and inevitable. To properly understand the relations of capital and labor, and to harmonize them, demands a correct comprehension of the basic principles of economy which relate to finance and commerce. ”

“ With the emergence of modern industry, and its production of large amounts of surplus commodities, important industrial groups like Britain and Germany which depended for their prosperity on their ability to find foreign markets for their surplus commodities, have been driven to a fierce struggle for these markets. ”

“ The stability of trade, the money value of every description of vested interests, in fact, the industrial, commercial, and financial welfare of the country, all are directly involved in the rapid manipulation of such vast sums. ”

“ The primary object of this order shall be to organize exchange on the largest scale that may be practicable, with a view to the establishment of equitable relations between producers and consumers, by eliminating as rapidly as possible, every element of cost that does not go to the producers of the wealth exchanged, less an equitable compensation to the labor, physical and mental, that is necessary to an economical management of the business. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Derived, as our public revenue is, in chief part from duties on imports, its magnitude affords gratifying evidence of the prosperity, not only of our commerce, but of the other great interests upon which that depends. ”

“ We have studied as perhaps no other nation has the most effective means of production, but we have not studied cost or economy as we should either as organizers of industry, as statesmen, or as individuals. ”

“ We think nowadays that the resources of a state depend upon the prosperity of the people, no matter whether this prosperity comes from agriculture or from manufactures, 167from internal trade or from foreign trade. Statesmen, however, of the period under discussion, set a peculiarly high value on foreign commerce, and regarded it as a more important branch of industry than any other. ”

“ My countrymen, it is not alone the volume of money which the people want, but they demand its activity in trade and commerce. If you ask me how this can best be accomplished, I will answer by saying, protect American industries and universal confidence will surely follow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In America and in Europe the chief concern is industry,—industry in the large sense, agriculture, manufacture, commerce. These are the interests that concern the people, [312] that control their policy. ”

“ Twelfth—That while providing revenue for the support of the general government, by duties upon imposts, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interest of the whole country, and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence. ”

“ But if by gain be meant saving of labour and capital in obtaining the commodities which the country desires to have, whatever they may be; the country will gain, not in proportion to its own need of foreign articles, but to the need which foreigners have of the articles which itself produces. ”

“ But if we change terms, and rejecting this equivocal and fluctuating idea of a balance of trade, consider whether commerce has contributed to the wealth and prosperity of the United States, or has been the cause of the distress they are now enduring, the evidence will at once strike us as more intelligible, and the conclusion as more certain. Agricultural improvements, building houses and raising up cities, manufacturing improvements and ship building, are among the strongest proofs of a permanent increase of national wealth and prosperity. ”

“ Many lean and hungry peoples are being integrated into the global economy. Competition is particularly fierce for trade and investments. And the countries most likely to capture these investments are those that set out the appropriate policies. ”

“ By protective duties and bounties on exportation, by subsidies of all sorts to manufactures and national navigation, by the acquiring of transmarine colonies, by the creation of privileged commercial companies, by the inspection of manufacturing processes, by the perfecting of means of transportation and the suppression of interior custom-houses, every state strives to increase its means of production, to close its market to its competitors, and to make the balance of trade incline in its favor. ”

“ For to whom are we indebted for our capital, for the industry and commerce which we have? To whom belong those manufactories which the people want to protect, and in whose favour so much is said? Why, to foreigners! Foreign hands and foreign capital cultivate our soil, expand our trade and commerce, and promote the arts.170 The results of their labour remain, though they may themselves quit the country! Foreigners man our ships, build our manufactories, and supply them with hands; foreigners buy our produce and carry it to distant markets; foreigners render our forests and rivers productive ”

“ Trade had developed under the new rule, and had expanded with improved means of communication. Capital had begun to accumulate, and the moneyed classes were in favour of a government that would support public credit and refrain from extortion. The mass of the people were contented, prices being cheap, wages on the rise and employment brisk. ”

“ Now lies before us the opportunity—with their stable governments and protection for enterprise and property, and our increased capital—now lies before us the opportunity to be allied to them also by the bonds of personal intercourse and profitable trade. ”

“ We say the more trade there is, and the more the balance of trade seems against us, the more likely are we to obtain large profits, and the profits again are invested in loans to other countries, and in forwarding enterprises for the general benefit of the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The world has progressed, or retrogressed, as the most powerful interests at any time adjusted the institutions and customs governing wealth production to their own advantage. As the controlling interests in our present scheme are the business interests, it is the business man, not the workman, who directs industry and determines its policy as well as the general policy of the nation in which it operates. ”

“ We are told that we produce more than this country can consume, and must have foreign markets in which to sell our surplus products. Well, must we own the countries with which we wish to trade? Is not this a notion ludicrously barbarous? ”

“ This thoroughly modern market economy features high-tech agriculture, up-to-date small-scale and corporate industry, extensive government welfare measures, an equitable distribution of income, comfortable living standards, a stable currency, a stable political system, and high dependence on foreign trade. ”

“ We have the power, gentlemen, of going back to the time when protection was in full and unchecked force, and of examining the effect which it produced313 upon the wealth of the country. How, will you say, do I mean to test that wealth? I mean to test that wealth by the exports of the country, and I will tell you why, because your prosperity depends upon the wealth of your customers—that is to say, upon their capacity to buy what you produce. And who are your customers? Your customers are the industrial population of the country, who produce what we export and send all over the world. ”

“ We have had many political issues claiming the attention of the people within my own memory—issues growing out of the Civil War, issues relating to the tariff and the currency—issues which, if sifted to the bottom, have all had direct or indirect relation to our industrial system. ”

“ These laws are founded upon the natural action of the system of exchange, carrying forward all its operations by the natural action of the great principle of demand and supply. When capital and labour know how to accommodate themselves to the direction of these natural laws, they are in a healthy state with respect to their individual rights, and the rights of industry generally. They are in that state in which each is working to the greatest profit in carrying forward the business of production. ”