Principles of Political Economy · John Stuart Mill
Chapter XIV. Of International Values.
The great productiveness of any industry in our country has thus two results: (1) it gives a larger total out of which labor and capital at home can receive greater rewards; and (2) the commodities being cheaper in comparison than other commodities not so easily produced, furnish the very articles which are most likely to be sent abroad, in accordance with the doctrine of comparative cost. In the United States, those things in the production of which labor and capital are most efficient, and so earn the largest rewards, are precisely the articles entering most largely into our foreign trade. That is, we get foreign articles cheaper precisely because these exports cost us less in labor and capital. These, of course, since we inhabit a country whose natural resources are not yet fully worked, are largely the products of the extractive industries, as may be seen by the following table of the value of goods entering to the greatest extent into our foreign export trade in 1883: Raw cotton $247,328,721 Breadstuffs 208,040,850 Provisions and animals 118,177,555 Mineral oils 40,555,492 Wood 26,793,708 Tobacco 22,095,229 These six classes of commodities are arranged in the order in which they enter into our export trade, and are the six which come first and highest in the list.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
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