SKETCH OF EDWARD ATKINSON. 115 



obnoxious incident for which, some person, generally the owner or 

 occupant, shall be held responsible. 



From the fruits of his studies in economic science he has sus- 

 tained, or perhaps first presented, the proposition that the burden 

 of a tax upon any commodity can be truly measured only by its 

 ratio to the margin of profits on a given manufacture rather than 

 by its ratio to the total cost of the product into which the taxed 

 material enters as a component. Hence a tax bearing a very small 

 ratio to the gross value of the product, when imposed upon some 

 apparently insignificant article which enters into a process of 

 manufacture, may entirely forbid the establishment of that branch 

 of industry in a country where otherwise it might have been suc- 

 cessfully established. He therefore opposes duties on what are 

 commonly but incorrectly called " raw materials," for the reason 

 that such duties, when imposed upon crude or partly manufactured 

 materials which are used in the various processes of domestic in- 

 dustry, not only cripple the manufacturers, but also injure the 

 domestic producers, even of the same materials, by restricting 

 their use. 



He has, further, worked out and presented facts in proof of 

 the theory that the wages or earnings of those who are com- 

 monly called "the working-classes" are a result of production, 

 and can not be considered an antecedent to production which can 

 be absolutely measured and determined or agreed upon for any 

 considerable period before the work is undertaken, since all taxes, 

 profits, and wages must, in the long run, be derived from the 

 product itself. It follows, however, from this principle that, 

 under free conditions, high wages in money, or in what money 

 will buy, must in the end be the necessary correlative or conse- 

 quence of a low cost of production. In other words, the price of 

 labor does not measure the cost of labor, the cost of labor depend- 

 ing upon many other elements than the wages or earnings of those 

 who take part in the conversion of the cruder products of the 

 soil, the mine, or the forest, into the finished forms commonly 

 known as manufactures. 



He has also maintained the proposition that under free condi- 

 tions of exchange the workman must of necessity, decade by 

 decade, secure to his own use or enjoyment an increasing share of 

 an increasing product, even though free exchange be limited in the 

 United States to its own area — the exceptions to this rule being 

 in countries where the free exchange of services is obstructed by 

 the diversion of products in the form of taxes to the support of 

 great standing armies, or to the payment of interest on huge na- 

 tional debts. In such instances, the benefits of improvement and 

 invention being taken up by the tax-gatherer, it may follow that 

 the workman is, decade by decade, becoming poorer and more in- 



