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128 ECONOMIC INQUIRIES AND STUDIES
IO per cent. cheaper in the fertile country than it is in
a country which does not grow its own food at all, and
which may be thousands of miles away. As the staff
of life only enters into the expenditure of the artisan
to the extent of 20 per cent. at the outside, and into
the expenditure of richer classes to a smaller extent,
the difference on the whole income of a community
made by their living where the staff of life would be
cheaper would be less than 2 per cent.-too small to
tell against other advantages which may be credited
to them. What is true of wheat is even more true of
meat and other more valuable articles of food where
the cost of conveyance makes a less difference in the
proportionate value of the food in situ and its value at
a distant point. The same more and more with raw
materials. Cotton and such articles cost so little to
transport that the manufacturing may as well go on in
Lancashire or any other part of the Old World as in
situ or nearly i1t situ; and even as regards metals or
minerals, except coal and perhaps iron, the same rule
applies, the cost of conveyance being as nothing in
proportion to the value of the raw material itself. As
regards coal and iron, moreover, there are many places
where they are not in absolute juxtaposition, and if
they have to be conveyed at all they may as well be
conveyed to a common centre. Iron ore and iron at
any rate are beginning to be articles of import into the
old countries of Europe, to which the cost, in fact,
offers very little difficulty. The additional cost to the
miscellaneous manufacturing of a country through its
having to bring iron and coal from a distance may
thus be quite inconsiderabl~, and apparently is becom-
ing more and more inconsiderable. As regards raw
materials generally it has also to be considered that,
owing to their immense variety, there is an undoubted
convenience in a common manufacturing centre to
which they can be brought. Hitherto they may have
come to England and other old countries of Europe
in part because coal and iron were abundant there in