20

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

and it would seem that her people have but to move to the better
region in order to enjoy its better conditions. So it would be if
the cause of advantage in the United States were merely of a
physical sort — climate, land, or what not — and if the Germans
were quite as capable of utilizing the natural conditions as the
Americans. But if the differences in effectiveness do not rest
purely on physical grounds; if they are due to aptitudes which
the Americans possess but the Germans do not; if the Germans
on moving to the United States could not there apply their labor
with the same intelligence, ingenuity, vigor, as the Americans, —
there would be no certainty of gain from the shift. As we shall
see, causes of this kind do operate. Not physical causes alone —
natural resource and the like — determine the current of international
 trade; the human factor counts heavily.
At this stage of our inquiry, however, we assume that the Germans
 remain in their own country. It is not material for what
reason they do so. It may be that they are indifferent to a possible
gain from transplanting themselves, being attached to their own
country, familiar with its mode of life and ignorant of life abroad,
immobile even tho they might prosper by moving. They are to
be supposed, for the purposes of the present argument, to go their
own way regardless of the American possibilities; the Americans
also go their own way. And then the two groups will have no
occasion for exchange of goods.
The same conclusion is readily reached under the supposition
not of barter, but of money and prices: sales of goods and transactions
 between individuals.
We may make at the start any supposition whatever with regard
to prices and wages ; it will remain to be seen what figures represent
the definitive conditions. Suppose that in the United States
wages are $2.00 a day, in Germany $1.00 a day. Then we have:

In the U. S. 10 days’ labor
” 2) i, S. 10 » 2»
” Germany 10 ”’ ?
" Germany 10 22

Wages
PER DAY
$2.00 $20
$2.00 $20
$1.00 $10
$1.00 $10

Probpuce

30 copper
15 linen
20 copper
10 linen

DowMmesTic
SuprLy Price
$0.66%
$1.33%
$0.50
$1.00

HA