Essays of Benjamin Franklin

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1752429486

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-127700

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Franklin, Benjamin http://d-nb.info/gnd/118534912

Title:: Essays of Benjamin Franklin

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: G. P. Putnam's Sons

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: xi, 273 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: VIII. Positions to be examined, concerning national wealth

Collection:: Economics Books

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]

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