. Papers : literary, sicentific, & hey could afford to be idle nodoubt, but you can have too much even of idleness, especiallywhen you are poor. And what was the remedy against thesetwo modes of poverty ? Not an improvement in agriculture;that would make the twenty poorer than ever, five men thencould grow wheat enough for all, and putting twenty men to doit would be worse than before. The one conceivable remedy isto put the surplus hands not really required for the food pro-duction to produce a new right thing. That is to say, to producesomething satisfying a new want felt by those who can
. Papers : literary, sicentific, & hey could afford to be idle nodoubt, but you can have too much even of idleness, especiallywhen you are poor. And what was the remedy against thesetwo modes of poverty ? Not an improvement in agriculture;that would make the twenty poorer than ever, five men thencould grow wheat enough for all, and putting twenty men to doit would be worse than before. The one conceivable remedy isto put the surplus hands not really required for the food pro-duction to produce a new right thing. That is to say, to producesomething satisfying a new want felt by those who can giveback that which the producers need; or that which will getthem what they need by exchange. When this new want wasfound and the equilibrium between production and consumptionre-established, then indeed the improvement in agriculture wasfound to be a real gain. The community had more wantssatisfied than before. Diiect barter was not in the least necessary, provided thebarter circuit was closed in the way described. The easiest way. of representing this condition to the mind is by a diagram. Letthe reader sketch five little rudimentary people standing upright:let lines going out of the strokes to the right indicate pro- IS ONE MANS GAIN ANOTHER MAN S LOSS f 151 duce, wliicli each has to sell—one line representing the unit ofproduce per annum. Similarly let a line arriving at his lefthand represent the goods which each man consumes, one linerepresenting one unit of consumption per annum. Now if anytwo join hands by means of aline, this line forms a closed circuitshowing that produce of equal value has been the lines that go out from a mans right hand must befollowed home to his left without using the same line indicates that all the produce has been sold. On a systemof pure barter he never could get rid of any produce until oneof these imaginary circuits was closed. But the circuit mightbe a very long one. B}- the introduction of the system of cre
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1887
