EXCHANGE AND MARKETS 37

fish. His judgment of what is a fair bargain will be
influenced by the average results of a day’s or a week’s work
on the part of himself and the fisherman. If he be able to
fish as well as the fisherman, he will be inclined to refuse to
accept less than an average day’s catch of fish in exchange
for an average day’s supply of meat. If he give heed to his
greater skill as hunter, and the fisherman's greater skill in
his occupation, he may set his limit at the amount of fish he
could hope to secure, if he varied his diet by varying his
exertions instead of by means of an exchange of products
with his neighbour. The fisherman would have a similar
limit, and thus the range of possible rates of exchange,
which considerations of utility might permit, would be
subject to such limitation as corresponded to the relative
abilities of the exchangers in their own occupation, and in
that of those with whom they effected exchanges.
When, in place of two individuals, we consider whole
communities, this side of the problem gains in interest. The
limiting rates of exchange are not now concerned with the
sfficiency of a hunter when he goes fishing occasionally, but
with the division of the working force of each community
between the various occupations open to its members. If,
on the whole, a week’s work of a tailor exchange for more
than a week’s work of a bootmaker, though bootmakers will
not take to making clothes as an alternative to continuous
work at boots, there will be a diversion of supplies of labour
from the one trade to the other. Some decrease of numbers
of lads learning to make boots, and an increase of those
learning to make coats, will result. A limit to the rates of
sxchange of products of work will not be the comparative
sutput of the skilled tailor as tailor and as bootmaker. The
sutput as bootmaker might well be small, since the proper
training would have been lacking. The limit is rather
afforded by the output as tailor of a skilled tailor and as
bootmaker of a skilled bootmaker. The effective diversion
sf labour from one trade to the other, made as above
described, enables us to regard the labour-energy of the
sommunity. as applicable to the two trades, in such proportions
 as seems desirable in view of the demand for the