124 POLITICAL ECONOMY 



suggest that it must really be determined by some process 

 which is independent of the will whether of purchasers or 

 sellers : but this is not so. Each transaction shows that one 

 man is willing to part with some goods at a given price and 

 that another man is witting to purchase goods at that price. 

 The briskness or slackness of sales simply brings into evidence 

 the condition of the wills of the traders. In a market there is 

 never any serious discontent, you are free to offer your eggs to 

 a hundred buyers at what you think a fair price you find that 

 not one will buy you see eighty or ninety neighbours willing 

 to sell for a lower price than yours you go home with your 

 eggs unsold, disappointed no doubt, but feeling no suspicion 

 that injustice has been done you, believing on the contrary that 

 next day in another town you will get a still better price, when 

 you will rejoice at your foresight ; your state of mind would be 

 wholly different if you saw that all the buyers had agreed that 

 they would not compete with one another but would simply 

 give sixpence a dozen. They would no doubt get a supply even 

 at this price, perhaps 20,000 eggs instead of 95,000, the 

 number which would have changed hands if the price had been 

 settled by the market process, but every seller, even those who 

 sold their eggs, would feel sore. Men see that when buyer 

 competes with buyer, or seller with seller, a natural tentative 

 operation settles the price ; sellers are revolted by any attempt 

 on the part of buyers to fix a price arbitrarily, just because they 

 have money. Buyers feel the same thing if sellers combine to 

 say they won't sell their eggs for less than a shilling a dozen. 

 They must have some eggs ; they buy perhaps 20,000, and see 

 80,000 rotting taken home. Monstrous of the sellers to try to 

 fix an arbitrary price just because they have got eggs and we 

 have none ! 



Nor are matters a bit improved when buyers and sellers 

 both combine the sellers will not sell under a shilling a dozen, 

 the buyers will not give more than sixpence a dozen ; each 

 party abuses the other and all the eggs rot. This is a strike. 

 After some dozens of market days spent in this way one of the 

 two parties finds out that it is more inconvenienced than the 

 other ; perhaps that a substitute for eggs is in the market ; that 

 eggs are coming from Timbuctoo, and they come to an agree- 



