should have been
called capitalist initiative, for the average private citizen had
little enough share in it."

"You speak of raising the price of costly articles," I said. "How can
prices be regulated in a country where there is no competition between
buyers or sellers?"

"Just as they were with you," replied Dr. Leete. "You think that needs
explaining," he added, as I looked incredulous, "but the explanation
need not be long; the cost of the labor which produced it was
recognized as the legitimate basis of the price of an article in your
day, and so it is in ours. In your day, it was the difference in wages
that made the difference in the cost of labor; now it is the relative
number of hours constituting a day's work in different trades, the
maintenance of the worker being equal in all cases. The cost of a
man's work in a trade so difficult that in order to attract volunteers
the hours have to be fixed at four a day is twice as great as that in
a trade where the men work eight hours. The result as to the cost of
labor, you see, is just the same as if the man working four hours were
paid, under your system, twice the wages the other gets. This
calculation applied to the labor employed in the various processes of
a manufactured article gives its price relatively to other articles.
Besides the cost of production and transportation, the factor of
scarcity affects the prices of some commodities. As regards the great
staples of life, of which an abundance can always be secured,
scarcity is eliminated as a factor. There is always a large surplus
kept on hand from which any fluctuations of demand or supply can be
corrected, even in most cases of bad crops. The prices of the staples
grow less year by year, but rarely, if ever, rise. There are, however,
certain classes of articles permanently, and others temporarily,
unequal to the demand, as, for example, fresh fish or dairy products
in the latter category, and the products of high skill and rare
materials in the other. All that can be done here is to equalize the
inconvenience of the scarcity. This is done by temporarily raising the
price if the scarcity be temporary, or fixing it high if it be
permanent. High prices in your day meant restriction of the articles
affected to the rich, but nowadays, when the means of all are the
same, the effect is only that those to whom the articles seem most
desirable are the ones who purchase them. Of course the nation, as any
other cat