Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/408

374 doubtless arise a new and increased demand; and, supposing any particular branch of our manufactures to cease to produce the average rate of profit, the loss to the capitalist would be much less, if a market were open for the sale of his machinery to customers more favourably circumstanced for its employment. If, on the other hand, new improvements in machinery should be imagined, the manufacturer would be more readily enabled to carry them into effect, by having the foreign market opened where he could sell his old machines. The fact, that England can, notwithstanding her taxation and her high rate of wages, actually undersell other nations, seems to be well established: and it appears to depend on the superior goodness and cheapness of those raw materials of machinery the metals,—on the excellence of the tools,—and on the admirable arrangements of the domestic economy of our factories.

(449.) The different degrees of facility with which capital can be transferred from one mode of employment to another, has an important effect on the rate of profits in different trades and in different countries. Supposing all the other causes which influence the rate of profit at any period, to act equally on capital employed in different occupations, yet the real rates of profit would soon alter, on account of the different degrees of loss incurred by removing the capital from one mode of investment to another, or of any variation in the action of those causes.

(450.) This principle will appear more clearly by taking an example. Let two capitalists have embarked 10,000l. each, in two trades: A in supplying a district with water, by means of a steam-engine