MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 121 



and eggs feel the effects of the rising tide of money. The demand for 

 them being intense and inelastic, the money holders are impelled to 

 part with more units of their medium to secure the desired amount of 

 such goods. lu a word, wherever supply is limited relative to demand 

 jtrices will rise, and irhcrc flic limitation is greatest — ichcrc the means 

 of satisfying an inelastic want are scareest — there the price iciJl rise 

 first. Finally, if we assume that no changes in the character of wants 

 or the means of satisfying them takes jdace, the rise will S]»read from one 

 industry to another and affect all in the same proportion. 



It is thus easily exjilainable that food stuff's, for which man's wants 

 are least elastic, and the demand for which in the shape of a swelling 

 population has just begun to exhaust the old sources for new supplies, — 

 that food stuffs should show the earliest and highest rise. Housing, 

 fuel, and light are the objects of a relatively inelastic demand and have 

 risen in price to an extent only second to food stuffs. Clothes have a 

 more elastic demand : here relative prices are not now so high. 



But what of wages? If we assume competition it is evident that it 

 will spring up with and among those employers who receive the ad- 

 vanced prices and will insure an advance to labor, at least until some 

 growth in the labor supply brings a counter competition and reduction. 

 This last (pialification Avill probably be unnecessary, however, for the 

 rise in prices becoming more general, the cost of living will be increased 

 so that more money wages are requisite to insure the same real wage 

 as was received prior to the rise. The price of cotton goods, bread, 

 cattle, and leather goes up, and so on until the whole budget of the 

 laborer and everyone else is affected. 



But if there is an element of monopoly on the part of capital in the 

 favored industry the rise may not be transmitted through it to the in- 

 dustrial system, but be retained as a suiTilus profit. Xor would the 

 laborer's wages in that industry be advanced unless he too were a mem- 

 ber of a (labor) monopoly and forced a division, or until rises outside 

 his industry made an advance necessary to the maintenance of his 

 standard. 



In a word, the advance in wages follows that in prices. The chief 

 concessions to those who would attack labor organizations in this con- 

 nection would be made in pointing out that a monopolistic union in 

 an industry whose jiroducts were the object of an inelastic demand 

 might make that demand more intense by limiting supply and so de- 

 termine the point in the field of industry at which prices would first 

 rise, — a case of particular prices. 



The next question would be one of fact. Is there any evidence of such 

 action? Naturally we transfer our attention to what is the real prob- 

 lem of the hour the (juestion of the relation between particular prices 

 and particular wage groups. 



III. PAUTICT'LA-R PRICES. 



Turning to particular ])rices the problem is less simple. Here any 

 thing Avhich limits the sujqjly of a commodity relative to demand may 

 cause a rise in its price, whether this be nionoi)oly, or increased cost 

 of production, or absolutely limited su]ji)ly. Here is the field for in- 

 creased labor costs or expenses to express themselves. Do employes 

 16 



