40

ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

example, and houses must be built on the spot where they
are to be used. The limitations of marketability are not
permanent and unchanging, even in reference to very
perishable goods. The adoption of modern cold-storage
devices has enabled fruit, meat, and dairy products to be
supplied at great distances from their places of production,
and thus enlarged the scope of the markets for these goods,
The nature of the goods dealt in, too, influences the
extent and perfection of organisation of the markets for
dealing in them. Some goods must be examined by the
buyer before purchase, other goods can be bought and sold
by samples, the sample sufficing to show precisely what
kind and quality of goods are being bought. In other cases,
a classification or grading of the goods can be made, as in
the case of wheat, which is dealt in both by sample and by
reference to standards of quality expressed by recognised
descriptions or numberings of the different qualities, This
dealing in a commodity, not present at the time and place
of sale, reaches its greatest perfection in the markets for
bonds of governments and shares of industrial companies
and the like, known as stock exchange securities. Different
bonds of the same issue are practically identical for most, if
aot for all, purposes. Consequently, dealers may buy and
sell these, with absolute certainty as to what is being bought
and sold, even though the certificates are a long distance
away.
When goods can thus be accurately described, and cost
little to transfer from place to place, suffering no deterioration
 from keeping, the dealers in many far distant places
form practically one market. The telegraph supplies information
 as to conditions in all parts of the market, and,
this essential condition being fulfilled, all the dealers are in
effective competition with each other.
When the knowledge of every dealer, of the supplies,
and of the prices at which transactions in the goods he
deals in are effected, is exact and complete, he will neither
give more nor accept less than any other dealer in the same
goods, allowance being made for any costs of transport from
place to place. Thus, where a complete market organisa-