Читать книгу Rural Wealth and Welfare: Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm Life - Geo. T. Fairchild - Страница 11

Table of Contents

Exchange in production.—The immense importance of exchange in promoting the welfare of communities is easily granted, and is illustrated in every village store or even in every simple farming community. Today the market for farm products is easily felt to be the most important consideration, and weighs in every farmer's mind when buying or selling his farm. When a state like Kansas raises from six to ten times as much wheat as its people can use, exchange is evidently an essential factor in every farmer's welfare.

The multitude of everyday wants in most households supplied only through commerce shows the extent and importance of this exchange of labor throughout the world. The great advantages, however; may be seen by a little more careful analysis of the growth of individual powers under a ready system of exchange. Every laborer becomes effective by experience in some particular industry. A thousand years will not perfect a single worker in any of the thousands of employments needed to supply his wants. Every farmer knows the weakness of a beginner in farming, coming from any other business; and without exchange, every workman must always [pg 059] be a beginner in everything. Exchange is one of the chief motives to accumulation, since others' wants as well as our own are kept in view. The “hand to mouth” liver is almost always a man of all work, thinking little of exchange. It is especially a stimulant to saving, since it makes capital itself more useful and brings it directly into competition with all other forces. Products stored in the granary have their significance because of exchange.

Still more important is the cultivation of special abilities, impossible without exchange. The indefinitely varied powers of human nature are made most useful where each can devote his talent to a definite business; and usually the talent best fitted to a business is attracted toward it. Habits, too, which are the chief labor-saving characteristics in human nature; become all-important, and enable an individual to do a large part of his work with the least possible care. The routine of everyday life is followed with little effort or pain. The more regular the routine the easier it is to follow.

A still greater advantage to communities is found in the enlargement of the range of wants in all individuals. The superiority of enlightened men over savages is largely due to their greatly increased needs, since necessity, the mother of invention, compels exertion and finds the way to satisfaction. It seems, however, that exchange contributes most extensively to welfare by combining individuals into a community, and smaller communities into a larger, until the whole world is brought into sympathy. Thus every human being [pg 060] gains the advantage of growth in mind and character through some contact with every other human being within the commercial world. If ever a reign of peace and plenty shall extend over the world, no one doubts the importance of commerce and intimate exchange in bringing that time. The full advantage of free exchange in promoting human welfare cannot be over-estimated.

Exchange limited by powers.—With all its advantages, there are certain obstacles in the way of its extension, always more or less effective in limiting its range. A community can have few exchanges among individuals if all are busied in the same or similar trades. A farming community has little need of buying and selling among the farmers. A horse trade or an exchange of one brute for another may supply all necessities. In larger communities similar limitations are found where abilities are similar, or where habits in education, government or religion are very uniform. In such cases opportunities for exchange are limited, and commerce itself grows slowly.

The story of pioneer settlements is uniformly one of slow and uncertain commerce for want of the variety in wants and abilities which makes the very foundation of exchange. Sometimes “day's work for day's work” is the limit of exchange throughout a whole region or country. In the world at large limitations often arise from hostile feelings between nations, and as yet the highest freedom of exchange between people under different governments has seldom been reached. The United States affords the brightest example of people [pg 061] with varied characteristics developed through the stimulating effect of ready exchange.

Commerce over-estimated.—So rapid has been the advancement of systems of exchange within the last half century that men are prone to over-estimate the importance of commerce and its interests. The amount of wealth in motion exaggerates the importance of wealth itself, so that multitudes overlook the foundation in productive industry, and become mere bettors upon the market, attempting to catch a part of the moving wealth as it passes. Any speculation in mere commercial transactions may become a very serious obstacle to legitimate industry by its effect upon both the industry itself and the incentives to industry among the people. This danger is increased by the greatly extended interest in exchange among the rural population.

Scarcely a farmer in our country is beyond the effect of any extensive commerce throughout the world. The crops of South America and of the Russian plains are now as important to a farmer of Dakota as his own, since all must find a common market in the manufacturing countries of Europe. Speculation on the Chicago Board of Trade is likely to be as interesting to a farmer in Nebraska as to members of the Board. He is even tempted to try his hand at speculation, either directly through a commission house or indirectly through the marketing of his grain. In either case he is caught by the dangerous motion of modern commerce. The chief remedy for these tendencies must be found in a wider acquaintance with the facts of commercial life and a clearer perception of what is genuine commerce.

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Every farmer needs to distinguish, and distinguish carefully, the actual, necessary machinery of trade and the principles underlying it, that he may appreciate the genuine and oppose the false. On this account several chapters are given to questions of exchange, with an effort to bring into more prominent light the ways in which all commerce affects the farmer's life.

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