146 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
wheat—bore always the same relation to his remuneration of 10 
hours’ labour, and to the various items of his expenditure, it 
mattered not a whit to him whether the nominal money cost of 
wheat was high or low. In Australia the average relation 
between a breadwinner’s effort expended and a quarter of wheat 
usually represents 44} hours’ labour, equal to 5} days’ labour 
(S hours) nearly. If, therefore, the quarter of wheat and other 
things (including expenditure) always bore a corresponding 
relation to each other, as 445 hours’ common labour bears as the 
equivalent to one quarter wheat, it follows of necessity that 
nominal prices, whether high or low, would not increase or 
decrease his receipts or expenditure, nor his average gains or 
losses. Thus, so far, the various divisions of labour within any 
one State would never be affected, in reciprocal interchanges with 
each other, by alteration in the nominal cost of services, so long 
as the alteration in cost was a general one within the State, and 
governed by local natural conditions. 
But a different result would follow, so far as the shoemaker is 
concerned, if manufactures of boots and shoes were largely 
introduced from a country where nominal money prices were 
generally much lower, or where the average breadwinners of the 
population—reduced to a perilous condition—were forced to 
increase their expenditure of daily effort relative to the standard 
of cost of one quarter of wheat to 89 hours, or 77% days’ labour 
of 12 hours a day. The local shoemaker would not have the 
advantage of distance and cost of transit,.as in the case of the 
local quarryman or coal-miner; for shoes and boots can be 
transferred long distances at a relatively small cost, and hence, 
if not protected in some other way, the local shoemaker would be 
unable to compete with the foreign low-paid worker. Not only 
would he have to increase his efforts to the same extent as the 
foreign competitor, but he would (were it not impossible) have to 
exceed his efforts before he could drive the foreign competitor 
from the field, and failing this; he would be reduced, perhaps, to 
half-time employment at the foreign rate of wages, and, probably, 
soon he and his family, overwhelmed with poverty, would become 
local victims to competition ; and, instead of being a help to the 
State, would become dependants upon the rest of the bread- 
winners, thus increasing their State burdens. 
It is usual with theorists to talk lightly of the modzlity of 
labour under such circumstances, and to show that the local 
shoemaker, finding himself unable to compete in his capacity as 
shoemaker, would at once transfer his services to some other 
branch of labour, where, it is supposed by theorists, that there is 
always some providential provision. But all such writers do not 
seem to be aware that, in a country where manufacturing 
industries do not dominate, there is a tendency to narrow the 
scope of operations, and to close more and more the doors of 
