PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—-SECTION F. 137 
labour when properly directed would affect this desirable end, a 
corresponding or even a much greater amount of labour could not 
produce the same result if the previously carefully arranged and 
periodical regulation of the apportionment of labourers were 
subsequently disturbed in an arbitrary way. Every arbitrary 
disturbance of the proportion of labourers trained and originally 
apportioned to a special work or function has the effect of 
lowering the purchasing power of the section which was arbitrarily 
increased, because it introduced either curtailment of employ- 
ment, wrongful competition, over-production, or diminished 
purchasing power within that particular section of the division 
of labour ; and in the section from which they were arbitrarily 
withdrawn, it either lessened the amount of aggregate satisfactions 
required for all, or, if it have not that effect, it increases the 
hours of labour of those within the division beyond the maximum 
standard, without additional recompense for increased exertion. 
Tf, however, the additional hours are rewarded by extra satis- 
factions, it must be at the expense of the general consumers, 
thus lessening their average of aggregate satisfactions. 
The wrongful over-production is a direct loss to the whole 
community so healthfully regulated by community of interests. 
Oh, but your ideal Euphrasian forgets, says the Economist, 
that the surplus of A division might by interchange with another 
nation be made to restore the balance thus arbitrarily destroyed 
by A recompensing through products needed in division B where 
a deficiency was caused, This is true, but at best this course only 
helps to restore the loss occasioned by the arbitrary disturbance 
of the apportionment of the local Euphrasian division of services. 
Nay, more, the loss occasioned could not be fully restored by az 
equal exchange of labour and skill, for the exchange with the 
distant foreign country involved a fresh expenditure of labour in 
transfer and agencies of exchange—thus increasing the value of 
O or obstacles—between producer and consumer, and so inevitably 
lessening the quota of the essential material satisfactions to be 
divided among consumers. It must be borne in mind that 
Euphrasia is assumed to possess the maximum of favourable 
natural resources—plus best art appliances—and, consequently, 
the restoration of the destroyed equilibrium in Euphrasia could 
only be effected by a skilled people, who of necessity were forced 
to adapt themselves to circumstances by either being satisfied 
with a lower requirement of wants than that enjoyed by the 
Euphrasians, or by a similar standard of material satisfactions 
gained at a much greater expenditure of labour. 
For the sake of illustration, let us further examine this theory 
of obstacles. It will readily be granted that where two producing 
centres are situated at vastly different distances trom consuming 
centres, that supply from the nearer producing centre can be 
effected by a much smaller expenditure of labour than by the more 
_ distant centre of production. 
