THE ECONOMIC OUTLOOK. 31 



more popular favor and support in England than in the United 

 States ; and, probably, for the reason that the great establish- 

 ments which have sprung up in recent years at almost all the 

 considerable centers of population in the United States for the 

 sale of imperishable commodities, and which are systematically 

 conducted on the economic basis that large sales with relatively 

 small profits ultimately assure the largest aggregate of profits, 

 sell goods of the character indicated at lower retail prices than 

 generally prevail in England, and so limit the sphere of bene- 

 ficial operation of the American co-operative societies. 



The relation between prices and poverty has long attracted 

 attention, and nothing new in the way of theory remains to be 

 offered. Three thousand or more years ago, a certain wise man, 

 who had sat at the marts of trade, and made himself conversant 

 with the nature of wholesale and retail transactions, embodied 

 in the following short and simple sentence as much in the way 

 of explanation of these involved phenomena as the best results 

 of modern science will probably ever be able to offer, namely — 

 " Tlie destruction of the poor is their poverty." — Proverbs, 10th 

 chapter, 15th verse. Something in the way of a real contribution 

 to our general understanding of this subject would, however, 

 seem to be found in the recent observation that the value-per- 

 ceiving sense or faculty is not implanted by Nature in every 

 person, but differs widely in different races and families ; and 

 that " he who has it will accumulate wealth with comparatively 

 slight exertion, while he who has it not will not gain it, no mat- 

 ter how energetically he labors." * Illustrations of this are fa- 

 miliar to every student and investigator of social science ; but 

 the following one seems especially worthy of record : On the 

 ferries between New York and Brooklyn, the rates of toll were 

 some years ago reduced' nearly one half to all who would buy at 

 one time (or at wholesale) fifty cents' worth of tickets. But it 

 was soon noticed that the working-classes, who at morning and 

 evening constituted the bulk of the travel, rarely bought tickets, 

 while they were bought as a rule by those who belonged to bank- 

 ing and mercantile establishments. 



The countries of the world which within the last third of the 

 century have made the greatest material progress are the 

 United States and Australia. This has been due largely in both 

 cases to the vast abundance of cheap and fertile land, which has 

 occasioned and made possible a great increase in population. 

 Like conditions have been similarly influential in increasing the 

 population of Russia in a more rapid ratio than in most of the 

 other countries of Europe. The United States, by reason of its 

 great natural resources, and extensive use of machinery and con- 



* "The Labor- Value Fallacy," by M. L. Scudder, Chicago, 1886. 



