17 Essays 143
great a profit thereon as if he had first turned the
wheat into manufactures, by subsisting therewith the
workmen while producing those manufactures; since
there are many expediting and facilitating methods of
working not generally known; and strangers to the
manufactures, though they know pretty well the ex-
pense of raising wheat, are unacquainted with those
short methods of working, and thence being apt to
suppose more labor employed in the manufactures
than there really is, are more easily imposed on in
their value, and induced to allow more for them than
they are honestly worth.’
11. Thus the advantage of having manufactures in
a country does not consist, as is commonly supposed,
in their highly advancing the value of rough mate-
rials, of which they are formed; since, though six
pennyworth of flax may be worth twenty shillings
when worked into lace, yet the very cause of its being
worth twenty shillings is, that, besides the flax, it has
cost nineteen shillings and sixpence in subsistence to
I The reasons for paying a price are not founded merely upon a
computation of the expense of production. A general knowledge of
the expenses of producing a bushel of corn does not prevent the pro-
ducer from demanding and the consumer from paying a higher price
when the article is scarce; nor the consumer from offering and the
producer from accepting a lower price when it is plenty. A proposi-
tion bearing a near affinity to that stated in the text seems to be true,
namely, that those things which are of general production and habitual
consumption, like the common agricultural products, are more likely
to bear a market price near to the cost of production, than things of
less common production and less regular use, as the article of lace,
mentioned in the next section. It may also be generally the case, that
the greater the distance of the place of consumption from that of pro-
duction, the longer an article is likely to be sold at a great profit, since
the operation of competition, in bringing down the price, is likely to
be slower.—W. PHILLIPS.
4,69]
