Credit Money and the Precious Metals. 239 



value of grain produced in England. Such arbitrary 

 influences on the value of commodities have the most 

 permanent effect on articles not producible at will, 

 because such commodities are sheltered from the law of 

 automatic compensation, according to which a rise in value 

 stimulates supply sooner or later.* Land is not producible 

 at will ; but the opening up of previously uncultivated 

 areas of the surface of the globe operates within certain 

 limits in the same way as an increase in the supply of 

 commodities producible at will, by checking the advance 

 of rents. In gold, however, we have a commodity not 

 producible at will, or, in only a very restricted sense of the 

 word, the present 'exchangeable value of which is largely 

 dependent on the function of legal tender conferred on 

 it by law. When, therefore, the demand for gold as money 

 increases with the demonetisation of silver, the growth 

 of population, and the expansion of the production of 

 commodities producible at will, such production being 

 promoted by the progress of science and the opening 

 up of new lands, we have a case of unearned increment, 

 which is* so far, apparently independent of compen- 

 sating influences. Moreover, the unearned increment in 

 this case is much more extensive than any which arises 



*The reader will, I hope, pardon me for not treating the subject of value 

 historically. To have reviewed the various definitions and sub-divisions which 

 have been introduced by different writers would have encumbered the paper 

 unnecessarily. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between com- 

 modities which can be indefinitely multiplied and those which cannot be 

 increased at all, or between commodities on which competition operates and 

 those which are absolute monopolies. In practice the differences are very 

 largely mere differences of degree. The anxiety which has been manifested in 

 South Africa in consequence of the alleged discovery of the new " Wesselton" 

 diamond mine suggests that even diamonds may become, for a time, things 

 practically capable of indefinite multiplication. I have adopted the term 

 *' producible at will" as giving a sufficiently simple distinction for the purpose 

 of the paper. Everyone can recognise the difference between the producible- 

 ness of commodities like wheat, or woollen, or cotton goods, and of a rare 

 metal like gold. 



