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and from the various strata which compose the capitalist employing class. We have to conceive, in the metaphor of Jevons, a horizontal as well as a vertical cleavage. If the vertical cleavage before represented by the isolation of islands is now represented by the separation between the wings and towers of a mansion, the horizontal cleavage may be represented by the separation between the flats which form the different stories of the mansion. In domestic or internal trade there is assumed to be more or less perfect mobility between the compartments on the same story; but not mobility between the stories, one of which may be imagined to contain the working classes, the other the capitalist employing class1.
In economics it is often difficult to hold fast general resemblances without ignoring — or appearing to ignore — specific differences. In the present matter, while apprehending that the transactions between the operative and the employing classes are of the genus international trade, we must not forget that the exports and imports in this trade are of a very peculiar character. The peculiarity might be partially illustrated by the trade which used to flourish between England and the Southern States of America; these States exported to England raw cotton, receiving in return cotton manufactures. If the offer of raw cotton with the demand for cotton manufactures were to be increased on one side of the international market by a change such as the growth of population in the Southern States, other things being the same, the offer of manufactures on the other side of the market on the part of a large and flourishing England would be likely to keep pace with the offer of raw material, in such wise as not to alter the terms of international exchange to
- ↑ The propriety of conceiving the transactions between employers and employed as a sort of international trade was discerned by J. S. Mill (Political Economy, Book III, chap. II, last paragraph). Professor Pigou seems to sanction the view here presented when referring to the presentation of it in the «Economic Journal» he says: «Is it not the better view that the great divisions of the industrial world, land, capital, brainpower, trained hand labour, muscular-labour are now competing in the sense that against those who would pass from one to another there is a great gulf fied» (Edinburgh Review, vol. CCIII, pag. 23, January 1906 — an article of which, professor Pigou has acknowledged himself the author in his book on Import duties.
