THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 13 



of all others, political and social. Even the industrial activities are 

 often permanently turned out of their normal directions by social 

 states that passed away many ages ago ; as witness what has happened 

 throughout the East, or in Italy, where towns and villages are still 

 perched on hills and eminences chosen for defensive purposes in tur- 

 bulent times, and where the lives of the inhabitants are now made 

 laborious by having daily to carry themselves and all the necessaries 

 of life from a low level to a high level. 



The extreme complexity of social actions, and the transcendent 

 difficulty which hence arises of counting on special results, will be still 

 better seen if we enumerate the factors which determine one simple 

 phenomenon, as the price of a commodity say, cotton. A manufac- 

 turer of calicoes has to decide whether he will increase his stock of raw 

 material at its current price. Before doing this, he must ascertain, as 

 well as he can, the following data : whether the stocks of calico in the 

 hands of manufacturers and wholesalers at home are large or small ; 

 whether by recent prices retailers have been led to lay in stocks or 

 not ; whether the colonial and foreign markets are glutted or other- 

 wise ; and what is now, and is likely to be, the production of calico by 

 foreign manufacturers. Having formed some idea of the probable de- 

 mand for calico, he has to ask what other manufacturers have done, 

 and are doing, as buyers of cotton whether they have been waiting 

 for the price to fall, or have been buying in anticipation of a rise. 

 From cotton-brokers' circulars he has to judge what is the state of 

 speculation at Liverpool whether the stocks there are large or small, 

 and whether many or few cargoes are on their way. The stocks and 

 prices at Xew Orleans, and other cotton-ports throughout the world, 

 have also to be taken note of; and then there come questions respect- 

 ing forthcoming crops in the Southern States, in India, in Egypt, and 

 elsewhere. Here are sufficiently numerous factors, but these are by 

 no means all. The consumption of calico, and therefore the consump- 

 tion of cotton, and therefore the price of cotton, depends in part on the 

 supplies and prices of other textile fabrics. If, as happened during the 

 American Civil War, calico rises in price because its raw material be- 

 comes scarce, linen comes into more general use, and so a further rise 

 in price is checked. Woollen fabrics, also, may to some extent com- 

 pete. And, besides the competition caused by relative prices, there 

 is the competition caused by fashion, which may or may not pres- 

 ently change. Surely the factors are now all enumerated ? By no 

 means. There is the estimation of mercantile opinion. The views 

 of buyers and sellers respecting future prices, never more than approxi- 

 mations to the truth, often diverge from it very widely. Waves of 

 opinion, now in excess, now in defect of the fact, rise and fall daily, 

 and larger ones weekly and monthly, tending, every now and then, to 

 run into mania or panic ; for it is a mong men of business as among 

 other men, that they stand hesitating until some one sets the example, 



