92 SYMBIOGENESIS 



community, not increasing in population and wealth, labour and capital 

 have to be drawn from other industries where they are already yielding 

 the ordinary returns. Let us now go a step further. Suppose that this 

 iron ship-building industry, having enlarged as much as the available 

 capital and labour permit, is still unequal to the demand, what limits 

 its immediate further growth ? The lack of iron. By the hypothesis, 

 the iron-producing industry, like all the other industries throughout the 

 community, yields only as much iron as is habitually required for all 

 the purposes to which iron is applied : ship-building being only one. 

 If, then, extra iron is required for ship-building, the first effect is to 

 withdraw part of the iron habitually consumed for other purposes and 

 to raise the price of iron. Presently, the iron-makers feel this change 

 and their stocks dwindle. As, however, the quantity of iron required 

 for ship-building forms but a email part of the total quantity required 

 for all purposes, the extra demand on the iron-makers can be nothing 

 like so great in proportion as is the extra demand on the ship -builders. 

 Whence it follows that there will be much less tendency to an imme- 

 diate enlargement of the iron-producing industry the extra quantity 

 will for some time be obtained by working extra hours. Nevertheless, 

 if, as fast as more iron can be thus supplied, the ship-building industry 

 goes on growing if, consequently, the iron-makers experience a perman- 

 ently increased demand, and out of their greater profits get higher 

 interest on capital as well as pay higher wages, there will eventually 

 be an abstraction of capital and labour from other industries to enlarge 

 the iron -producing industry ; new blast-furnaces, new rolling-mills, new 

 cottages for workmen, will be erected. But obviously, the inertia of 

 capital and labour to be overcome before the iron-producing industry 

 can grow by a decrease of some other industries, will prevent its growth 

 from taking place until long after the increased ship-building industry 

 has demanded it, and meanwhile, the growth of the ship-building 

 industry must be limited by the deficiency of iron. A remoter restraint 

 of the same nature meets us if we go a step further a restraint which 

 can be overcome only in a still longer time. For the manufacture of 

 iron depends on the supply of coal. The production of coal being pre- 

 viously in equlibrium with the consumption, and the consumption of 

 coal for the manufacture of iron being but a small part of the total 

 consumption, it follows that a considerable extension of the iron manu- 

 facture, when it at length takes place, will cause but a comparatively 

 small additional demand on the coal-owners and coal-miners a demand 

 which will not, for a long period, suffice to cause enlargement of the 

 coal trade by drawing capital and labour from other investments and 

 occupations. And until the permanent extra demand for coal has become 

 great enough to draw from other investments and occupations sufficient 

 capital and labour to sink new mines, the increasing production of iron 



