ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

choice is restricted. Yet it can hardly be denied that
a low price for a commodity implies that the needs,
which remain unsatisfied, and to which it is capable of
affording satisfaction, are small as compared with those
which more highly priced goods can satisfy. The fact that
property is unequally distributed, that some have large
means, others small means, results in the fact that a slight
need, of a person of large means, may find expression in
the offer of a price higher than that which can be offered
by persons of small means, for the gratification of important
cravings. This feature hides from many enquirers the
general truths to which attention is here directed. Admitting
 that it needs special attention, we repeat that
freedom of choice as to what work one will do, and how
one will take the remuneration for that work, tends to make
employments attractive in comparison to the urgency of the
need of the community for the results of those employments,
Where goods of a certain kind are no longer required in the
same supply as formerly, a warning is given to that effect
by the diminution of the gains, which those who are concerned
 in making those goods can secure. In the opposite
case, increase of reward serves to stimulate to an increase of
supply of the things of which society stands greatly in need.
That no small degree of efficiency is realised, in the distribution
 of the work of the nation among the individual
citizens, is evidenced in the fact that supplies of necessaries
are steadily produced to meet our needs, and in remarkable
correspondence to those needs. The employments which
seem in many respects most attractive do not draw to themselves
 the whole labour supply of the community. The
sreat variety of human needs is met by a corresponding
variety of means of satisfaction. Men do things that are
not pleasant to do, for the sake of the living which they
can secure in doing them. Thus each of us is justified in
attending to his own special business, confident that others,
in attending to theirs, will ensure the supplies of food, clothing,
 etc., which we need, and which, in a primitive state of
society, we should need to provide by our own exertions if
xe desired them.