PREVENTION OF NATIONAL WASTE 131 

 depend upon the demand and supply of that particular 

 commodity in a single country, but upon the world's 

 demand and supply of that commodity, and this is true 

 in the main, or, it might be said, it is truer in theory 

 than in practice. 



Broadly speaking, we may say that the country which 

 produces all that it requires of a certain commodity, 

 pays less for that commodity, and is in a safer position 

 in respect thereto, than another country which produces 

 none of it. 



Can it be proved by any living man that, apart from 

 such abnormalities in prices as may be caused by specu- 

 lative dealers or market-riggers, Lancashire, for ex- 

 ample, pays precisely the same price for cotton as the 

 New Orleans mills, which buy the commodity at their 

 doors? Can it be proved that the London millers pay 

 the same price for their wheat as it can be purchased at 

 in the markets of the Canadian plains? Other things 

 being equal, the thing is an impossibility, because of the 

 incidental expenses attending the transport and sale of 

 commodities from one place to another, middlemen's 

 profits, and so on. 



Let England produce aU the corn she requires for her 

 own consumption, and several results are sure to follow 

 that are bound to be to her profit and advantage. 



1. She will be less at the mercy of " Cornerers " an Beneficial 



.,,. . , , Results of 



millionaire speculators. a Change 



2. The price of corn will be less liable to sudden and °^ Policy 

 violent fluctuations which are generally " engineered " 



by unscrupulous speculators. 



3. She will become practically independent of outside 



gu 



