A critical dissertation on the nature, measures and causes of value

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1858887097

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-271916

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Bailey, Samuel http://d-nb.info/gnd/1055121706

Title:: A critical dissertation on the nature, measures and causes of value

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: The London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London)

Year of publication:: 1931

Scope:: xxviii, 255 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2022

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. On real and nominal Value

Collection:: Economics Books

COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE AND PROTECTION 195 such as handsome silks and chinaware; and again in certain sorts of minute and delicate mechanical devices.! The Swiss have shown an aptitude for labor-saving appliances and machinery greater than that of most of their neighbors. Germany, where handicraft methods of production seemed deeper rooted than in any other of the modern nations, shifted to the machine process in the latter part of the nineteenth century with surprising rapidity and success. Great Britain had the start in the machine methods and long maintained a preéminent position. While she cannot be said to have lost headway, still less to have moved backward, her position relatively to other countries ceased by the close of the nineteenth century to be that of unquestioned leadership. These differences and shifts have been the occasion for vaunting and vainglory, for national jealousy and recrimination. To the objective mind of science, they present questions of the greatest interest and of the greatest complexity. How are they to be explained? Are they based on the inheritance of racial traits, of which the explanation is to be found in biology? Or are they historical phenomena, quite unrelated to any physical or biological laws, originating perhaps thru the impetus of powerful personalities, persisting chiefly by imitation and habit? Political factors cer- tainly have their influence. The free breath of democracy, the open road to every talent, unquestionably have been factors in the economic development of the United States, and of Switzerland also. Many and various questions arise. It is beyond the scope of the present volume to consider these additional complexities. Like others on which our inquiry touches, they offer a fruitful field for further investigation. I know no more inviting set of topics for the right kind of economic history — ! Lord Lauderdale in a note to his Inquiry into the Nature of Public Wealth (2nd ed. 1818), p. 335, pointed out that even in the eighteenth century there was a well-developed difference in the character of French and English manufactures. The French excelled in fine cloths, rich silks, cambries and fine linens, looking-glass, china, jewelry, and silversmith work. The English excelled in lower-priced cloths, silk ribbons and mixed goods, linens less fine, common glass, pottery and earthen- ware, hardware. Lauderdale ascribes the difference to the different distribution of wealth in the two countries. The greater massing of large fortunes and excessive luxury in France caused a demand for luxuries and so a perfecting of their manu- facture; the more even distribution of wealth in England caused common articles to be in demand.

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