SPECIALIZATION AND DIVISION OF LABOUR. 3G1 



of the totality of desires. So, too, is it on passing from 

 producer to consumer. If in a village the labourer s wife 

 buys bread from a baker, it is because the difficulties to 

 be overcome in the home-production of bread, render the 

 resistance to that course greater that those resistances to the 

 course chosen which are represented by extra cost; and if 

 the farmer, ceasing to make his own beer, buys of a local 

 brewer, it is again because in the average of cases the ex 

 penditure of effort has by modern conditions been rendered 

 smaller in the last way than in the first. 



Nor is it only in such elaborations of the division of 

 labour, and developments of correlative social structures, 

 that we see movement along lines of least resistance. We see 

 it also in the activities of these structures. The law of sup 

 ply and demand, implying streams of commodities from 

 places where they are abundant to places where they are de 

 ficient, and a consequent balancing, is a corollary of this 

 same law. For since money everywhere represents labour, 

 buying in the cheapest market is satisfying a want with the 

 least expenditure of labour; and selling in the dearest 

 market and so getting the largest amount of this representa 

 tive of labour, diminishes the labour afterwards required. 



