INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
matter whether expenditure in one direction is preferred to expendi- 
ture in another. The American demand schedule has shifted. 
Regarding the tourists as one among the various groups of Ameri- 
cans who find foreign products to their liking, the American people 
as a whole now want more of foreign things than before. A read- 
justment of the barter terms of trade is necessarily involved ; but 
it no more involves a real loss, in the hedonistic calculus, than any 
case of change in demand. It is a matter of what people prefer. 
Another point may be raised : the relation of such remittances 
to the distribution of wealth within a country. In the preceding 
paragraphs it has been tacitly assumed, for simplification of the 
problem, that the Americans, travellers and stay-at-homes, are 
a homogeneous set of persons. We have neglected what is sug- 
gested by the familiar conditions of travel — that, so far from 
there being homogeneity, the travellers are the rich, while the bulk 
of the Americans and the main consumers of imports are those of 
slender means. We have supposed, then, that the American 
travellers are a sample of the Americans as a whole; or, what 
amounts to the same thing for the purpose in hand, that the set 
that travels is the identical set that is buying the imports. Apply- 
ing this supposition to our illustrative case, the American travellers 
and the American purchasers of German linens may be regarded as 
the same group. Then these travellers not only have to meet 
their expenditures abroad, but have also to face the fact that their 
German linen bought in the United States is more expensive than 
before, while their money incomes (derived from domestic sources) 
are smaller than before. If they nevertheless continue to travel, it 
must be because the attractions are so great as to outweigh all the 
drawbacks, increased expense of linen included. The net gain in 
satisfactions or gratifications remains; otherwise this particular 
choice would not be made. 
It is to be granted, of course, that the supposed homogeneity 
of purchasers is not necessarily, perhaps not generally, in accord 
with fact. The American tourists may be quite a different set of 
persons from those who buy the goods imported. But this con- 
sideration introduces an extraneous set of factors — the distribu- 
120