the law of decreasing returns, sugar that in early days could not be bought for $1.00 a pound, has, in ordinary times, become one of the cheapest of commodities? The answer is obvious. The high price stimulated investment of capital, and the application of invention, genius and intense energy, which, in turn, stimulated production and the consequent competition that resulted in the decline always following. Exactly this same law is operating now, and it will result in a like inevitable decline. See how fully this economic law is exemplified in the present market of the leather and silk industries. Though, if the results of the investigation of all great economists be not incorrect, this decline is being retarded now only by the dangers and annoyances created by governmental power. Of course, it does not tend either to courage or clarity of judgment for a business man who may be making a thousand sales a day to fear that he may unwittingly be committing an equal number of criminal offenses, that may subject him to heavy penalties of fine and imprisonment, if some District Attorney and jury, desirous of getting bargains, might decide that he should have charged less for the commodities that he has sold. Indeed, if such be the law, and it be enforced—it cannot be impartially enforced, for all the judges, juries and district attorneys could not possibly pass upon the multitudinous cases that must arise and need investigation. Under such circumstances trade must stop, or become a mere criminal lottery.
As John Stuart Mill says:[1] "Insecurity paralyzes, only when it is such in nature and in degree, that no energy, of which mankind in general are capable, affords any tolerable means of self-protection. And this is a main reason why oppression by
- ↑ See Mills' Political Economy, Vol. 2, page 384.
