are not raised, nor their fall retarded. But, if the laborers people up to the improvement in their condition, and so relapse to their previous state, profits will rise. All inventions which cheapen any of the things consumed by the laborers, unless their requirements are raised in an equivalent degree, in time lower money wages, and, by doing so, enable a greater capital to be accumulated and employed, before profits fall back to what they were previously.
Improvements which only affect things consumed exclusively by the richer classes do not operate precisely in the same manner. The cheapening of lace or velvet has no effect in diminishing the cost of labor; and no mode can be pointed out in which it can raise the rate of profit, so as to make room for a larger capital before the minimum is attained. It, however, produces an effect which is virtually equivalent; it lowers, or tends to lower, the minimum itself. In the first place, increased cheapness of articles of consumption promotes the inclination to save, by affording to all consumers a surplus which they may lay by, consistently with their accustomed manner of living. In the next place, whatever [pg 507] enables people to live equally well on a smaller income inclines them to lay by capital for a lower rate of profit. If people can live on an independence of [$1,000] a year in the same manner as they formerly could on one of [$2,000], some persons will be induced to save in hopes of the one, who would have been deterred by the more remote prospect of the other. All improvements, therefore, in the production of almost any commodity tend in some degree to widen the interval which has to be passed before arriving at the stationary state.
§ 6. —by the importation of cheap Necessaries and Implements.
Equivalent in effect to improvements in production