International trade

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1758394757

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136209

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Taussig, Frank William http://d-nb.info/gnd/120199459

Title:: International trade

Place of publication:: New York, NY

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: XXI, 425 Seiten; graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Part I. Theory

Collection:: Economics Books

WAGES NOT UNIFORM — NON-COMPETING GROUPS 55 shift may endure so long that the standards themselves may change. There is as much evidence to show shift in the standards of living of different classes as there is to show fixity. It may fairly be maintained that when we pass beyond the forces of demand (which are in any case determinant only over many years) and try to examine the forces of supply, we do reach not a domain of fixity but one of constant flux. If this be the just view, it follows that the impact of reciprocal international demand is not separate from that of reciprocal domestic demand, but merges with it and becomes part of one combined force. For example, we have supposed, in a previous illustrative case, that the linen makers of Germany are in a lower group, less well paid than other German workers. While German wages in wheat are $1.00, they are but $0.75 in linen. Why the difference ? Is it due to settled standards of living in the several groups? To supply or to the play of demand? We may hesitate to go further than say that the numbers of persons in the other groups and the keenness of their demand for linen, compared to the number of the linen-workers and the keenness of their demand for the other products, have combined to bring about by a quasi-mechan- ical process the stated differences in the wages of the German exchanging groups. If this then be regarded as the initial situa- tion — that established in Germany when isolated — and if we suppose her thereafter to be confronted with a demand for linen from the United States, this new demand for German linen is added to the former demand from the German workers themselves. The play of demand is altered to the advantage of the linen workers. The relations between the groups within Germany become differ- ent ; the linen workers get higher prices for linen and higher wages for themselves. How important in practice is the general train of reasoning followed in this chapter? Are we to conclude that the more simple analysis with which we started, resting on the assumptions of homogeneity in labor groups and uniformity in wages, becomes quite inapplicable where there are heterogeneous social and indus- trial conditions and wide diversities of wages in any one country ?

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