Fish and Precious Metals

Fish

²²² The multiplication fish is both limited and uncertain.

It is limited by:

• the local situation of the country
• the proximity of its provinces from the sea
• the number of its lakes and rivers
• the fertility or barrenness of those seas, lakes and rivers to fish

As population increases, there will be more buyers of fish. They will have more goods to buy fish with.

But it will be impossible to supply a great market without employing more labour than what was needed in a small one. A market which usually requires only 1,000 tons of fish might come to require 10,000 tons. It must be supplied by employing more than 10 times more labour than before. The fish must be sourced farther with larger vessels and more expensive machinery. The real price of fish, therefore, naturally rises in the progress of improvement.

²²³ The local situation of the country renders the efficacy of the fishing industry in bringing fish to market, even if the success of a day’s fishing may be a very uncertain.

The fishing industry depends more on the local situation of a country than on the state of its wealth and industry. Because a country’s wealth and industry may also vary and be uncertain.

Precious Metals

224 The efficacy of human industry is uncertain in increasing the quantity of mined minerals and metals.

225 The quantity of the precious metals in any country is not limited by its local situation, such as the fertility or barrenness of its own mines.

Those metals frequently abound in countries which possess no mines. Their quantity depends on=

• its power of purchasing, and
• the fertility or barrenness of those mines which supply the commercial world with precious metals.

This fertility or barrenness must affect the quantity of those metals in the countries farthest from the mines because of the easy and cheap transportation of those metals.

Their quantity in China and India must have been affected by the abundance of the American mines.

226 The real price of precious metals, when depending on their power of purchasing, will fluctuate with the country’s wealth. Countries which have a lot of labour and subsistence to spare can by more precious metals than countries which have less.

227 The real price of precious metals, when depending on the fertility of the mines, will fluctuate relative to the fertility of those mines.

228 The fertility of the mines may have no connection with a country’s industry. It even has no connection with the world.

The search for new mines may be more successful when arts and commerce spread globally, than when they are confined.

The discovery of new mines is most uncertain.

• No human skill or industry can ensure it.
• There is no limit to the success or failure of the search for new mines.

The value of a mine can only be ascertained with its actual discovery and operation. It is possible that new, more profitable mines may be discovered within a century of two. The most fertile mine then, may become more barren than any of those prior to the American mines. The success or failure of mines is of very little importance to the real wealth and prosperity of the world. The nominal value of wealth or the quantity of gold and silver it is represented in, would be very different.

12 pennies in the past might represent no more labour than a penny does at present. One who had 12 pennies in the past would be no richer than one who has a penny at present. The cheapness and abundance of gold and silver plate would be the sole advantage the world could derive from this nominal change. But its real value, the real quantity of labour which it could command, would be precisely the same.

A penny in the past might represent as much as 12 pennies does now. One who had a penny in the past would be just as rich as he who has 12 pennies now. This change in real value would only cause the inconvenience of their dearness and scarcity.