xxiv 
AMERICAN PREFACE. 
s. 
aceelerates procluction tends to lower prices. The skill which 
devises labor-saving machinery, and then tends it, must of necessity 
diminish the value added to raty material by manufacture ; and, the 
greater the expenditure of skill in this direction, the less it’will 
manifest itself in the price of products. It is not enough, however, 
to exercise skill to cheapen produetion ; it should also be exercised 
to improve the quality of things made, and thus to advance prices. 
But it is taste especially which can contribute to the value of 
innumerable manufactures ; which always tends to enhance, never 
to diminish, prices. True, it does not necessarily require more 
labor to make an object beautiful than to make it liomely; but the 
beautiful object always commands the higher price, and so, while 
the consumer is better pleased, the producer is better paid. That 
is the way of it. 
Now, Americans have especially distinguished themselves in 
devising labor-saving machinery, and have been abundantly * 
rewarded for thus cheapening produetion. Hence it does not follow 
that but little skill has been expended on American manufactures, 
because the value added by manufacture is so much less than the 
value of raw material consumed. There has been little lack of 
skill that increases quantity. But what is said of Swiss, English, 
11 euch manufactures, as a whole, should also be said of American 
manufactures, namely, that their price is advaneing 1 in spite of 
cheapened produetion ; and this will be said of them when we give 
as much thought to improving their quality as we have given to 
augmenting their quantitj-, Though there is ample room for further 
cheapening produetion, yet we shall find it quite as much to our 
advantage to improve the qualitj’ of our products. 
OUR EXPORTS AND IMPORTS COMPARED. 
If we now turn to our foreign trade, and compare our exports 
with our imports, we find that, to speak in general terms, we 
export breadstuffs and raw materials, and import skill and taste. 
1 It is estimated that in England alone the force ofitained from coal, and 
applied to mechanical pnrposes, does the work of one hundred inillions of men 
wuthout any off-setting demand for food and clotking. And yet the prices 
of English products, as a -whole, are said to advance, because they are so 
greatly nnproved in quality.