42

INTERNATIONAL TRADE

mental thing in the movement of domestic prices, as distinct
from international, is the movement of money incomes; and
among these, again, the basic are the wages of manual labor, such
as are usually registered in the index numbers of wages. Here
is the item that is most significant and most easy to interpret and
follow. Changes in money wages, so far as peculiar to a given
country — so far as due, that is, to causes affecting it alone, and
not a reflex of a general movement appearing throughout the commercial
 world — are at once the first indicator of changes on
other domestic “prices”, and also the effective mechanism through
which the greater or less gain from international trade is transmitted
 to the several peoples. It is this which should especially
be watched, and it is this, fortunately, which the statistical material,
 when available at all, is most likely to lay bare.