Principles of Political Economy Part 21

[Footnote 207-3: In Germany horses are said to last, on an average, 18 years; in England 25; in France and Belgium, only 12 years. (See for the proofs of this _Rau_, Handbuch II, -- 168.) The more civilized a people are, the less do they completely destroy values by use; and the more do they use their old linen, etc. as rags; their remains of food as manure, etc. (_Roesler_, Grunds., 552.)]

[Footnote 207-4: _Ritter_, Erdkunde, III, 209. Thus, the French in the 13th century were acquainted with only three kinds of cabbage; in the 16th, with six, about 1651, with 12; they are now acquainted with more than 50; in the 16th century they knew only 4 kinds of sorrel; in 1651, 7; about 1574, only 4 kinds of lettuce; to-day they know over 50; under Henry II., they were acquainted with 2 or 3 kinds of melons; in the 17th century, with 7; now they are acquainted with over 40. (_Roquefort_, Histoire de la Vie privee des Fr., I, 179 ff.) Instead of the four kinds of pears mentioned by de Serre (1600), there were, in 1651, about 400. (I, 272.) Liebaud, 1570, knew only 19 kinds of grapes; de Serre, 41. (_Roquefort_, III, 29 ff.) According to the "Briefen eines Vers...o...b..nen," IV, 390, the first kitchen-gardener in London had 435 kinds of salad, 240 of potatoes, and 261 of pease.

And so precisely in ancient times. While the earlier Greeks speak of but one ?????, even at the most sumptuous feasts (compare, however, _Homer_, Il. XI, 641;) and while even in the time of Demosthenes only very few kinds of wine were known (_Becker_, Charicles, I, 455), _Pliny_, H. N. XIV, 13, was acquainted with about 80. In this respect the moderns have never returned to ancient simplicity; at least the fabliau, La Bataille des Vins, introduces us to 47 kinds of French wine in the 13th century. (Compare also _Wackernagel_ in _Haupt's_ Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alterth., VI. 261 ff., and _Henderson_, History of ancient and modern Wines, 1824.) The Lacedemonians, with their intentional persistence in a lower stage of civilization, used the same garment in winter and summer (_Xenoph._, De Rep. Laced., II, 4); while the contemporaries of Athenaeos (III, 78 ff.) were acquainted with 72 kinds of bread. With what a delicate sense for good living the Romans in Caesar's time had discovered the best supply places for chickens, peac.o.c.ks, cranes, thunny-fish, muraena, oysters and other sh.e.l.l-fish, chestnuts, dates, etc., may be seen in _Gellius_, N. A., VII, 16. Compare _Athen._, XII, 540.

In the middle age of Italy, the houses had almost always three rooms: _domus_ (kitchen), _thalamus_, _solarium_.

(_Cibrario_, E. P. del medio Evo, III, 45.) The manors or masters' houses built on the estates of Charlemagne had 3 and 2 rooms, sometimes only 1, and sometimes 2 rooms and 2 bedrooms. According to an old doc.u.ment of 895, a shed was worth 5 sols, a well-built manor 12. (_Anthon_, Geschichte der deutschen Landwirth., I, 249 ff., 311.) The Lex Alamanorum, t.i.t. 92, provided that a child, in order to be considered capable of living, should have seen the roof and four walls of the house! See an able essay, capable of being still further developed, by _E. Herrmann,_ in which he endeavors to explain the _division of use_ and of labor on Darwin's hypothesis of the origin of species in the D.

Vierteljahrsschrift, Januar., 1867.]

[Footnote 207-5: Thus, 1785-1795, the best Silesian wool cost 60, the worst 26, thalers per cwt.; in 1805, on account of the great demand for cloth to make military uniforms, the former cost 78, the latter 50 thalers. (_Hoffmann_, Nachla.s.s, 114.)]

[Footnote 207-6: The one large kitchen naturally requires much less place, masonry, fuel, fewer utensils, etc., than 100 small ones. Think of the relatively large savings effected by the use of one oven kept always heated! Even the Lacedemonians called their meal a.s.sociations fe?d?t?a, i. e., save-meals. Dainties proper can be consumed only in very small portions, but cannot well be prepared in such quant.i.ties. A guest at a first cla.s.s Parisian restaurant has, at a moderate price, his choice of 12 _potages_, _24 hors d'uvres_, _15-20 entrees de buf_, _20 entrees de mouton_, _30 entrees de volaille et gibier_, _15-20 entrees de veau_, _12 de patisserie_, _24 de poisson_, _15 de rots_, _50 entremets_, _50 desserts_; and, in addition, perhaps 60 kinds of French wine alone. What more can a princely table offer in this respect? Compare _Brillat-Savarin_, Physiologie du Gout, Medit., 28.]

[Footnote 207-7: In Diocletian's time, there was purple silk worth from 2 thalers to 250 thalers per pound.

(_Marquardt_, Rom. Privatalterthumer, II, 122.)]

[Footnote 207-8: Concerning the application of the above principle in industry and in the care of the poor, see _infra_. The advantages afforded by consumption in common, or the combination of use, have been enthusiastically dwelt upon by _Fourier_, and the organization of his phalansteries is based essentially on that principle. In these colossal palaces, which, spite of all their magnificence, cost less than the hundred huts of which they take the place, a ball is given every evening, because it is cheaper to light one large hall, in which all may congregate. The division of use, or of consumption also, is here developed in a high degree. When 12 persons eat at the same table they have 12 different kinds of cheese, 12 different kinds of soup, etc.

Even little children are allowed to yield to the full to their gluttonous propensities, since on them depends the productive activity of the so-called _series pa.s.sionnees_.

Compare Nouveau Monde, 272. The Saint-Simonists also characterize the _a.s.sociation universelle_ as the highest goal of human development. (_Bazard_, Exposition, 144 ff.) On the danger of this development to family life, see _Sismondi_, Etudes I, 43.]

SECTION CCVIII.

NATURE AND KINDS OF CONSUMPTION.--NOTIONAL CONSUMPTION.

By the notional consumption (_Meinungsconsumtion_), as Storch calls it, operated by a change of fashion, many goods lose their value, without as much as suffering the least change of form or leaving the merchant's shop. This kind of consumption, too, is exceedingly different in different nations. Thus, in Germany, for instance, fashions are much more persistent than in France.[208-1] In the most flourishing times of Holland, only n.o.blemen and officers changed with the fashions, while the merchants and other people wore their clothes until they went to pieces.[208-2] In the East, fashions in clothing are very constant;[208-3] but the expensive custom there prevails, for a son, instead of moving into the house occupied by his father, to let it go to ruin, and to build a new one as a matter of preference. The same is true even in the case of royal castles. Hence, in Persia, most of the cities are half full of ruins, and are in time moved from one place to another.[208-4]

The national income of a country is, on the whole, much less affected by a change of fashion than the separate incomes of its people. The same whim which lowers the value of one commodity increases the value of another; and what has ceased to be in fashion among the rich, becomes accessible, properly speaking, to the poorer cla.s.ses of the community for the first time.[208-5] The want of varying his enjoyments is so peculiar to man, and so intimately connected with his capacity for progress, that it cannot in itself be blamed. But if this want be immoderately yielded to, if the well-to-do should despise every article which has not the charm of complete novelty, the advantages of the whole pattern-system, by means of which the preparation of a large number of articles from the same model at a relatively small cost, would be lost.

Besides, fashion, which makes production in large quant.i.ties, for the satisfaction of wants that are variable and free, possible, frequently means even a large saving in the cost of production.[208-6]

[Footnote 208-1: The consequences of this are very important to the character of French and German industry.

(_Junghanns_, Fortschritte des Zollvereins, I, 28, 51, 58.) Rapidly as the Parisian fashions in dress make their way into the provinces, their fashions in the matter of the table are very slow to do so. (_Rocquefort_, Hist. de la Vie privee des Fr., I, 88 seq.)]

[Footnote 208-2: _Sir W. Temple._ Observations on the U.

Provinces, ch. 6.]

[Footnote 208-3: As most persons adorn themselves for the sake of the opposite s.e.x, this invariability is caused by the oriental separation of two s.e.xes. Our manufacturers would largely increase their market, if they could succeed in civilizing the East in this respect. In Persia, shawls are frequently inherited through many generations, and even persons of distinction buy clothes which had been worn before. (_Polak_, Persien, I, 153.) In China, the Minister of Ceremonies rigidly provided what clothes should be worn by all cla.s.ses and under severe penalties. (_Davis_, The Chinese, I, 352 seq.)]

[Footnote 208-4: _Jaubert_, Voyage en Perse, 1821. While cities like Seleucia, Ctesiphon, Almadin, Kufa, and even Bagdad, were built from the ruins of Babylon.]

[Footnote 208-5: In Moscow, merchants close their accounts at Easter. Then begins a new cycle of fashions, after which all that remains is sold at mock-prices. (_Kohl_, Reise, 98.) In Paris, there are houses which buy up everything as it begins to go out of fashion and then send it into the provinces and to foreign parts. Thus, there are immense amounts of old clothing shipped from France and England to Ireland. Hence, the latter country can have no national costume appropriate to the different cla.s.ses; and the traveler sees with regret, crowds of Irish going to work in ragged frock-coats, short trowsers and old silk hats. In Prussia, many of the peasantry, in the time of Frederick the Great, wore the discarded uniforms of the soldiery.]

[Footnote 208-6: _Schaffle_, N. Oek. _Hermann_, Staatsw.

Untersuchungen, II, Aufl., 100.]

SECTION CCIX.

CONSUMPTION WHICH IS THE WORK OF NATURE.

The least enjoyable of all consumption (_loss-consumption_) is that which is the work of nature; and nature is certainly most consuming in the tropics. During the rainy season, in the region of the upper Ganges, mushrooms shoot up in every corner of the houses; books on shelves swell to such an extent that three occupy the place previously occupied by four; those left on the table get covered over with a coat of moss one-eighth of an inch in thickness. The saltpetre that gathers on the walls has to be removed every week in baskets, to keep it from eating into the bricks. Numberless moths devour the clothing. Schomburgk found that, in Guiana, iron instruments which lay on the ground during the rainy season became entirely useless within a few days, that silver coins oxydized, etc.; evidently a great obstacle in the way of the employment of machinery. In summer, the soil of this same region, so rich in roots, is so parched by the heat, that subterranean fires sometimes cause the most frightful destruction.

In Spanish America, there are so many termites and other destructive insects that paper more than sixty years old is very seldom to be found there.[209-1]

The warmer portions of the temperate zone are naturally most favorable to the preservation of stone monuments. Thus, for instance, in Persepolis, where there has been no intentional destruction, the stones lie so accurately superimposed the one on the other that the lines of junction can frequently be not even seen. The amphitheatre of Pola has lost in two thousand years only two lines from the angles of the stones.[209-2] The Elgin marble statues would certainly have lasted longer in Greece than they will in England. On the other hand, warm and dry climates have a very peculiar and exceedingly frightful species of nature-consumption in the locust plagues. The princ.i.p.al countries affected by such consumption are Asiatic and African Arabistan, the land of the Jordan and Euphrates, Asia Minor, parts of Northern India. On Sinai, locust plagues occur, on an average, every four or five years; but from 1811 to 1816, for instance, they destroyed everything each year. Their course is in its effects like an advancing conflagration. It turns the green country, frequently in a single day, into a brown desert; and famine and pestilence follow in its path.[209-3]

The colder regions of the temperate zone are exposed to danger and damage from land-slides in their long series of mountains, and from avalanches, from quicksands in many of their plains, from floods and the total destruction of land along their coasts;[209-4] but, on the other hand, they are, relatively speaking, freest from hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes, the ravages of which no human art or foresight is competent to cope with. From the point of view of civilization and of politics there is here a great advantage. See -- 36. The former maritime power of Venice and of Holland is closely allied to the dangers with which the sea continually threatened them, and which was a continual spur to both. But, on the other hand, the danger from earthquakes which always impends over South America and Farther India, must produce consequences similar to those of anarchy or of despotism, because of the uncertainty with which they surround all relations. See -- 39.[209-5]

[Footnote 209-1: _Ritter_, Erdkunde VI, 180 ff; _Schomburgk_ in the Ausland, 1843, Nr. 274; _Humboldt_, Relation hist., I, 306; Neuspanein, IV, 379; _Popping_, Reise, II, 197 ff., 237 ff. The ant, even in Marcgrav's time, was called the _rey do Brazil_.]

[Footnote 209-2: _Ritter_, Erdkunde VIII, 895; _Burger_, Reise in Oberitalien, I, 7. The monuments of Nubia have suffered much less from the hand of time than those of Upper Egypt, because the air of the plateau is drier. The effects of climate have been most severely felt in Lower Egypt, where the air is most moist. (_Ritter_, I, 336, 701.) In the case of wood, on the other hand, dryness may be a great agent of destruction. Thus, in Thibet, wooden pillars, balconies, etc., have to be protected with woolen coverings to keep them from splitting. (_Turner_, Gesandtsreise, German translation, 393 ff.)]

[Footnote 209-3: Compare _Ritter_, Erdkunde, VIII, 789-815, especially the beautiful collection of pa.s.sages from the Bible bearing on the locust plague, 812 ff. _Pliny_, H. N., XI, 85. _Volney_, Voyages en _Syrie_, I, 305. For account of an invasion of locusts, which, in 1835, covered half a square mile, four inches in thickness, see _v. Wrede_, R. in Hadhrammaut, 202. It is estimated that, in England, the destruction caused by rats, mice, insects, etc., amounts to ten shillings an acre per year; i. e., to 10,000,000 per annum. (_Dingler_, Polyt. Journal, x.x.x, 237.)]

[Footnote 209-4: Origin of the gulf of Dollart in Friesland, 2 square miles in area between 1177 and 1287; and of Biesboch of 2 square miles in 1421. On the repeated destruction of lands in Schleswig by inundations, see _Thaarup_, Danische Statistik, I, 180 seq. It is a remarkable fact that in relation to the Mediterranean, _Strabo_, VII, 293, considers all such accounts fables.]

[Footnote 209-5: As to how the grandeur and irresistibleness, etc. of this nature-consumption in the tropics leads men to superst.i.tion and the indulgence of wild fancies, see _Buckle_, History of Civilization in England, 1859, I, 102 ff. Since the conquest of Chili, sixteen earthquakes, which have destroyed large cities totally or in part, have been recorded.]

SECTION CCX.

NECESSITY OF CONSIDERING WHAT IS REALLY CONSUMED.

Whenever there is question of consumption, it is necessary to examine with rigid scrutiny, what it is that has been really consumed; that is, that has lost in utility. The person, for instance, who pays twenty dollars for a coat, has consumed that amount of capital only when the coat has been worn out.[210-1] What is called the consumption of one's income in advance is nothing but the consumption of a portion of capital which the consuming party intends to make good from his future income.[210-2] Fixed capital, too, can certainly be directly consumed; for instance, when the owner of a house treats the entire rent he receives from it as net income, makes no repairs, and no savings to put up a new building at some future time. As a rule, however, the owner of fixed capital must, in order to consume it, first exchange it against circulating capital. Thus the prodigality and dissipation, especially of courts of absolute princes, have found numerous defenders who have claimed that they are uninjurious, provided only the money spent in extravagance remained in the country.[210-3] The prodigality itself, that is, the unnecessary destruction of wealth is not, on that account, any the less disastrous.[210-4] If, for instance, there are fire-works to the amount of 10,000 dollars, manufactured exclusively by the workmen of the country, ordered for a gala day; the night before they are used for purposes of display, the national wealth embraces two separate amounts, aggregating 20,000 dollars; that is, 10,000 dollars in silver and 10,000 in rockets, etc. The day after, the 10,000 in silver are indeed still in existence, but of the 10,000 in rockets, etc., there is nothing left. If the order had been made from a foreign country the reverse would have been the case, the silver stores of the people would have been diminished, but their supply of powder would remain intact.

In a similar way, there is occasion given for the greatest misunderstanding when people so frequently speak of producers and consumers as if they were two different cla.s.ses of people. Every man is a consumer of many kinds of goods; but, at the same time, he is a producer, unless he be a child, an invalid, a robber, a pick-pocket, etc.[210-5] At the same time, Bastiat is right in saying that in case of doubt when the interests of production and of consumption come in conflict, the state, as the representative of the aggregate interest, should range itself on the side of the latter. If we carry things on both sides to their extremest consequences, the self-seeking desire of consumers would lead to the utmost cheapness, that is, to universal superfluity, and the self-seeking wish of producers to the utmost dearness, that is, to universal want.[210-6]

[Footnote 210-1: Compare _Mirabeau_, Philosophie rurale, ch.

1; _Prittwitz_; Kunst reich zu werden, 474.]

[Footnote 210-2: A very important principle for the understanding of the real effects of the spending of a state loan!]

[Footnote 210-3: In this way _Voltaire_, Siecle de Louis XIV., ch. 30, excuses for instance the extravagant (?) buildings at Versailles; and in a very similar way Catharine II. expressed herself in speaking to the Prince de Ligne: Memoires et Melanges par le Prince de Ligne, 1827, II, 358.

_v. Schroder_ even thinks that the Prince might consume as much and even more than "the entire capital" of the country amounted to; only, he would have him "let it get quickly among the people again." He is also in favor of the utmost splendor in dress, provided the public see to it that nothing was worn in the country which was not made in the country. (Furstl. Schatz- u. Rentkammer, 47, 172.) Similarly even _Botero_, Della Ragion di Stato VII, 85; VIII, 191; and recently _v. Struensee_, Abhandlungen I, 190. The principle of Polycrates in _Herodotus_ is nearly to the same effect.

Compare, per contra, _Ferguson_, Hist. of Civil Society, V, 5.]

[Footnote 210-4: With the exception of the profit made by the manufacturers.]

[Footnote 210-5: Strikingly ignored by _Sismondi_, N. P., IV, ch. II.]

[Footnote 210-6: _Bastiat_, Sophismes economiques, 1847, ch.

IV. Everything which, in the long run, either promotes or injures production, "steps over the producer and turns in the end to the gain or loss of the consumer." Only for this principle, inequality and dissensions among men would keep growing perpetually. All that the systems of Saint Simonism and communism contain that is relatively true is thus realized.]

SECTION CCXI.

NATURE AND KINDS OF CONSUMPTION.--PRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION.