Page:International Trade, An Application of Economic Theory.djvu/21

 expansion of certain crude sorts of manufacture for foreign trade with less advanced peoples may similarly cause a temporary retardation. But the universal tendency of modern industrial civilisation is to engage a larger proportion of industrial energy in the later and more specialised processes of adapting matter to the satisfaction of a greater variety of special needs. This implies the growth of a qualitative economy of wealth; every further increase of wealth will be attended by a reduction of the increase of raw materials. Still more important will be the increasing proportion of industrial energy engaged in the transport and distributive industries, with the expansion of the area and the complexity of markets which belong to modern industrial civilisation. Finally, a rapidly increasing proportion of energy passes into the production and distribution of non-material wealth, governmental and other public work, professional and personal services, the fine arts, recreation and amusement.

§4. The statistics of occupations in every civilised modern nation prove that internal transport, the distributive trades, and professional and other non-material productions are engaging an ever-growing proportion of the national energy; while, as regards production of material forms of wealth, a larger proportion of workers are occupied in the final processes of adapting goods to the special tastes and habits of local groups of consumers. Now this implies that