BY E. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 



the average relation between a breadwinner's effort expended 

 and a quarter of wheat usually represents 44| hours labour, 

 equal to 5| days labour (8 hours) nearly. If, therefore, the 

 quarter of wheat, and other things (including expenditure) 

 always bore a corresponding relation to each other, as 444 

 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 solely by local natural conditions. But a different 

 result would follow, so far as the shoemaker is concerned, if 

 manufactured 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 7 T % 

 days labour of 12 hours per 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, 

 were it not impossible, he would have to exceed his efforts before 

 he could drive the foreign competitor from the field ; 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 mobility 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 entrance to the remaining branches 

 of active industries in proportion to the number of local 

 industries actually driven out of existence by the influx of 



