Supply

“ The economists who discovered that demand created supply soon had to limit the proposition to “effective demand,” which turned out, in the final analysis, to mean nothing more than supply itself; and this holds good in politics, morals, and all other departments as well: the actual supply is the measure of the effective demand; and the mere aspirations and professions produce nothing. ”

“ VII. Every commodity of which the supply can be indefinitely increased by labour and capital, exchanges for other things proportionally to the cost necessary for producing and bringing to market the most costly portion of the supply required. ”

“ Of course, in all exchange of commodities between two countries, besides that supply of the respective wants of each which constitutes the foundation or sustaining element of the commerce, a certain portion of what the consumer pays must fall to the share of the persons by whose agency the commerce is carried on. It is this that properly forms the profits of the commerce, as distinguished from its mere advantages or conveniences. ”

“ I told her God was her supply, and that there is a supply for every demand. ”

“ If my right hon. friend would only bring the supply to the demand he would do a great and most useful work.
I am told by the secretaries of other societies and companies that their hands are tied behind them, that they are crippled for want of land. Well, then here we have this plentiful supply of sites, and this demand for sites, and the question is how to bring this demand to touch the supply. ”

“ At the centers of business the great merchants, in touch, by the post and telegraph, with both consumers and producers, study to apportion the supply so that it will reach those who stand most in need of it, and seek to regulate future production so that there may be neither waste nor want when the product is brought to market. ”

“ As for the supply, that will always rise with facility to the amount of the demand; except in cases where nature has set limits, universal or local, or meddling statesmen have interposed their foolish restraints.' The Pamphleteer, xvii. ”

“ The whole quantity of industry annually employed in order to bring any commodity to market, naturally suits itself in this manner to the effectual demand. It naturally aims at bringing always that precise quantity thither which may be sufficient to supply, and no more than supply, that demand. ”

“ More especially is this the case when, as at the present time, many new sources of supply have been simultaneously opened, most of them practicable by labour alone, without any capital in advance beyond a pickaxe and a week's food ”

“ Demand and supply. So we get back, in the end, to the proposition with which we started, that the purpose of economic activity and organization is to supply human needs. Where the need is felt, the demand arises. ”

“ There is a kind of universal law of supply and demand, and the argument is simply that each link in the human chain, like those in the animate and inanimate worlds above and below it, is predestined to a specific function for the better ordering of the whole. ”

“ The adaptation of the supply to the demand, although it is continually governing the bodies of men, seems never to have made its way into their intellects, or they would have made it the governing principle of their arrangements. ”

“ But we should never forget that there is no service or commodity produced by man, however essential it may seem, the demand for or the supply of which might not be reduced to nothing, if the price were sufficiently raised on the one hand, or lowered on the other. ”

“ Because this phenomenon of over-supply, and consequent inconvenience or loss to the producer or dealer, may exist in the case of any one commodity whatever, many persons, including some distinguished political economists, have thought that it may exist with regard to all commodities; that there may be a general over-production of wealth; a supply of commodities in the aggregate, surpassing the demand; and a consequent depressed condition of all classes of producers. ”

“ Laws of Supply and Demand. In the next place, we must try to understand how the values of things are governed, and made to change from time to time. The principal laws which govern values are called the laws of supply and demand, and they are very important indeed. ”

“ Involving the production of commodities by individual contributors of human service through an infinity of specializations, and their assignment to individuals by the intricate processes of service for service, Trade tends not only to increase the per capita supply of commodities, but also to effect their fair per capita assignment in proportions corresponding to the relative desirability of the numerous and various contributions of individual service to their production. ”

“ But when this separation is thoroughly established; when it has become the general practice for each producer to supply many others with one commodity, and to be supplied by others with most of the things which he consumes; reasons not less real, though less imperative, invite to a further extension of the same principle. ”

“ The new comer brought with him into the country a demand for commodities, equal to all that he could produce by his industry, and it was his business to see that the supply he brought should be suitable to that demand. If he could not produce something capable of exciting a new want or desire in the community, for the satisfaction of which some one would grow more food and give it to him in exchange, he had the alternative of growing food for himself ”

“ It will be necessary, therefore, not only to produce a sufficient supply, but such articles, both in quantity and in kind, as may be required to remunerate those who conduct the imports. There will be needed then more husbandmen, and other artificers, in our city. There will be needed also other persons who will undertake the conveyance of the imports and the exports, and these persons are called merchants. ”

“ The internal actions constituting social functions, exemplify the general principle no less clearly. Supply and demand are continually being adjusted throughout all industrial processes; and this equilibration is interpretable in the same way as preceding ones. The production and distribution of a commodity, is the expression of a certain aggregate of forces causing special kinds and amounts of motion. The price of this commodity, is the measure of a certain other aggregate of forces expended by the labourer who purchases it, in other kinds and amounts of motion. ”

“ Everybody reads now because there are penny papers and an abundance of cheap periodicals; and so again, it is the supply which has given such an immense impulse to the desire to avail ourselves of it. In other words, supply and demand always mutually act and react upon each other. ”

“ Demand and {461} supply, and the desire of each man to gain a living by supplying the needs of his fellows, spontaneously evolve that wonderful system whereby a great city has its food daily brought round to all doors or stored at adjacent shops; has clothing for its citizens everywhere at hand in multitudinous varieties ”

“ In this, as in the supply of food for the body, the quantity is always ample where the operations of natural law are not antagonized in the administration of public business. We have ample facilities for gathering news, and everyone who has a thought to express finds an opportunity to do so. There is a steady supply which we distribute alike to all. ”

“ Let us now see what kind of provision we have laid in for future manufactures—what amount of raw material we have on hand, which, when converted into goods, shall enable us to liquidate this heavy balance, and provide for the future payment of a constantly increasing supply of articles of daily consumpt. We were to be fed by the foreigner, and to work for him, he finding us both the food and materials. ”

“ The principle, that value is proportional to cost of production, being consequently inapplicable, we must revert to a principle anterior to that of cost of production, and from which this last flows as a consequence,—namely, the principle of demand and supply. ”

“ The opinion that the price of commodities depends solely on the proportion of supply to demand, or demand to supply, has become almost an axiom in political economy, and has been the source of much error in that science. ”

“ In your valuable article of to-day on the strike of the colliers, while you lay down the true and just law [33] respecting all such combinations, you take your stand, in the outset, on a maxim of political economy, which, however trite, stands yet—if I am not deceived—in need of much examination and qualification. "Labor," you say, like every other vendible commodity, "depends for its value on the relation of supply to demand." ”

“ They consist also of what may be called the policy of the whole business—the quick comprehension of the fluctuating wants of the consumer, the extent to which these may be led, the extent to which they must be followed, the constant power of adjusting the supply of a commodity to the demand. ”

“ The Value of these Commodities confirm, in the long run, to their Cost of Production through the operation of Demand and Supply. The latent influence by which the values of things are made to conform in the long run to the cost of production is the variation that would otherwise take place in the supply of the commodity. ”

“ When the supply exceeds the demand, the value of this overproduction must greatly diminish; and every attempt will be made to produce, at any loss, an increased consumption. How many pairs of these gloves would you like to have, sir? ”

“ There are some commodities, the value of which is determined by their scarcity alone. No labour can increase the quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered by an increased supply. ”

“ Either one of the goods traded in cases of barter may be considered as sold, and either one as bought, according as the matter is looked at from the standpoint of the one or the other party to the exchange. Demand, therefore, is supply, and supply is demand when the point of view is shifted from one party to another. ”

“ Under the system of production on a large scale for foreign markets, with widely extended division of labour, it seems impossible to adjust accurately the supply to the demand, and there are in consequence constant fluctuations in the employment of labour. ”

“ This secondary life of commerce is mainly parasitical and feeds upon the other, and its vitality depends as much upon the success with which demands are ingeniously created as upon the power to produce the supply profitably. Added to this vast business of production is an enormous machinery of distribution ”

“ Then not by hoarding but by wisely using and ridding ourselves of things as they come, an ever renewing supply will be ours, a supply far better adapted to present needs than the old could possibly be. ”

“ We have already made abundant reference to the fundamental truth that in agriculture, the state of the art being given, doubling the labor does not double the produce; that, if an increased quantity of produce is required, the additional supply is obtained at a greater cost than the first. ”

“ For, if a certain amount of any manufactured article is necessary for a year's supply to our people, and we increase the amount that is brought from abroad, by just so much we diminish the amount that is made at home, and in just that proportion we throw out of employment the men that are working here. ”

“ It is always a difficult problem to solve, especially where the field is very large, and the producers many, and constantly increasing. In attempting to meet it, the first question to be answered is, does the present supply greatly overreach the present demand? ”

“ In other words, the farmer, who is subject directly to the law of supply and demand, may get greatly diminished prices for what he has to sell and be required to pay undiminished prices for what he has to buy. ”

“ In the earlier part of the Middle Ages, as only a very small number of costly products could bear the enhanced price which would have been caused by their transport, articles were only produced to supply the needs of the locality in which the producers lived. ”

“ We have already shown the bad results of the system upon the interests of the people, and do not intend to repeat it here. Ordinarily, the laws of trade, of demand and supply, will regulate and equalize the distribution of the circulating medium over the country. ”

“ One must not forget that all commerce is conditioned by the law of supply and demand, and that to avoid overloading the market with produce, production must be limited, according to circumstances, and in proportion to actual requirements ”

“ The stores have drawn attention to a principle which may yet find wide development—the organization of supply and demand, so that the uncertainties and difficulties of modern business may be made less oppressive than they are now felt to be. ”

“ These commodities {343} are severally and collectively liable to fall short; either from deficient harvests, from waste in war, from losses abroad, or from too great a diversion of labour or capital in some special direction. When a scarcity of some chief commodity or necessary occurs, what is the remedy? The commodity of which there is an excess (or if none is in excess, then that which can best be spared) is exported in exchange for an additional supply of the deficient commodity. ”

“ We see this in all directions growing up under our eyes. Wherever a large demand exists for any service, such, for instance, as transport, or for any article of use or consumption, there will the means of supplying both be organized. ”