WAGES NOT UNIFORM — NON-COMPETING GROUPS 45 
and purchase. Goods do not exchange directly for goods; they 
are sold for money and bought for money. The immediate 
actuating force is always that of the individual transaction — the 
sale of goods to advantage; and this means sale at a profit. How 
then can we have any assurance that such conclusions as were 
deduced in the preceding chapters concerning the influence of 
comparative labor costs have validity for the actual world? 
Goods are not bartered — wheat for linen — between countries. 
They are sold by individuals for cash. Their sale depends on 
prices; and prices are not necessarily, perhaps not usually, deter- 
mined by quantities of labor given to producing the goods. How 
modify, adapt, reconcile our analysis of international trade to these 
plain facts? 
Let us revert to the case considered in the preceding chapter. 
The figures with which we there began, it will be remembered, 
were as follows: 
[n the U. S. 10 deys’® 
PalleU:. S. & 
Germany 
Germany 
1 
Wages 
"FR 
TOTAL 
PropUCE 
Y wheat 
men 
hea, 
_o0 linen 
Domestic 
SuppLy Price 
$0.75 
$0.75 
$1.00 
$0.662 
The money cost of production of wheat is lower in the United 
States than in Germany; that of linen is lower in Germany. 
Trade takes place, the United States sending wheat, Germany 
sending linen. We still treat the wages outlay — that which the 
business world designates as “labor cost” — as if it were the 
sole item in supply price; return to capital is left for subsequent 
treatment. 
Suppose now, that the German wheat laborers get as wages not 
$1.00 a day but only $0.663. Suppose them to be, among the 
Germans, in a non-competing group, unfavorably situated, 
receiving less wages than obtained in other industries, but unable 
to betake themselves to the more prosperous group and therefore 
permanently in receipt of the lower pay. For the present, accept 
differences of this kind, whether in Germany or in the United 
States, as simply existent, disregarding the question how they