Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/696

 676 POLITICAL ECONOMY grated rock in its simplest forms, and thence ascending through vegetable and animal organ- isms to that of man, in which their greatest complexity and highest sphere are reached, and whence they are again set free to pass through that never ending circuit which constitutes the entire organic and inorganic creation, one per- fectly balanced system of universal exchange ; an incessant flux of the forms of matter in their ascent from the simple to the most com- plex, adjusted precisely to the growing require- ments of the successive orders of being in the great scale of vital development, the higher forms of being never outgrowing or overtop- ping the lower from which they spring, and to which they must of necessity return. Such are the reciprocities of motion, force, and func- tion, in which Carey finds an order and a sys- tem which, as he believes, put to flight the doc- trine of discords and disproportions announced by Malthus, and since adopted by so many of the economists of Europe. A chapter on the new doctrine of the occupation of the earth, already referred to, is followed by one devoted to an examination of the question of value. Utility, according to Carey, is the measure of man's power over nature. All the utilities de- veloped centre themselves in man, with con- stant increase of his power, and as constant decline of values, which are but the measure of nature's resistance to the gratification of man's desires. Wealth consists in man's power to command the always gratuitous services of nature. Production consists in directing the forces of nature to the service of man. Every act of consumption is also an act of pro- duction, water being consumed in the produc- tion of air, air being consumed in the production of water, both being consumed in the produc- tion of plants, which in their turn are consumed in the production of men and animals, all of which are finally resolved into the elements of which they are composed, to go their round again in the reproduction of plants, animals, and men. Capital is the instrument by the aid of which the work is done, whether existing in the form of land and its improvements, ships, ploughs, mental development, books, or corn. Trade is the performance of exchanges for other persons, and is the instrument used by commerce, which consists in the exchange of services, products, or ideas by men with their fellow men. As men are more and more en- abled to associate, commerce increases, but the power of trade declines; the growth of the one being here, as in the case of utility and value, in the inverse ratio of the other. Money is re- garded as the great instrument of association, power growing everywhere with increase in the ability to command the services of the precious metals. Price is the value of a com- modity as 'measured by money. Prices of land, labor, and all raw materials tend to rise with every increase in the power of associa- tion, that increase being attended by decline in the prices of finished commodities. They tend therefore to approximate, and it is in the closeness of that approximation that Carey finds the highest evidence of advancing civili- zation. In his opinion trade appears first, to be followed by manufactures; and it is not until the latter have been developed, and a market has been thus made in the neighbor- hood of the farm, that any real agriculture makes its appearance. The more complete the development of diversified industries, including agriculture, the greater is the tendency toward an influx of the precious metals, which like other raw materials tend always toward those places at which finished commodities are cheap- est. Circulating notes dimmish the value of the precious metals, but increase their utility, with constant diminution in the rate of inter- est, and equally constant increase in the tenden- cy toward equality among men, and strength in the communities of which they are a part. The power of accumulation is in the direct ratio of the rapidity of the societary movement. Pow- er grows with every increase in the numbers that can obtain food from any given space; and here we reach the law of population pro- pounded by Carey. Agriculture, as has been seen, becomes more productive as men are more and more enabled to combine. The more they can combine, the less is the waste of hu- man power in the search for food, and the less the muscular effort required for producing any given effect ; the locomotive of civilized soci- ety doing the work that in savage life is done by the shoulders of the man, and the great steam mill grinding the grain that before had required the severest labor. Vegetable food is largely substituted for animal food ; the ten- dency toward this substitution being always greatest in those communities in which grow- ing wealth most manifests itself in the clear- ing, drainage, and culture of those rich soils which, according to Ricardo, are cultivated when men are poor, weak, and scattered, but which, according to Carey, are last brought under human power, their very wealth forbid- ding their occupation by the early cultivator. The more perfect the development of the la- tent powers of the earth, and the greater the development of man's peculiar faculties, the greater is the competition for the purchase of labor, the greater is the freedom of man, the more equitable is the distribution of the prod- ucts of labor, and the greater is man's feeling of responsibility for his action in the present and of hope in the future. The higher that feeling, the greater the tendency toward matri- mony as affording the means of indulging af- fection for wife and children, and the love of home. The Malthusian theory Carey holds to be irreconcilably inconsistent with the real laws of nature as seen in the occupation of the earth, and the relative powers of increase in vegeta- ble life and in the lower forms of animal life and in man. The sphere of action of govern- ment in directing the commerce of the state is strictly limited to the removal of the obstacles