Chapter CXXXIV: Section CXXXIII: History Of The Prices Of The Chief Wants Of Life. (Continued.)

C. Those raw materials which, from the very first, have been obtained by the means of production properly so called, maintain a much greater uniformity in price. In the lower stages of civilization, they are never found permanently in excess; and as the economy of a people advances, the growing dearth of natural forces may be more or less counterbalanced by the greater cheapness of capital and labor. This is true, especially of wheat. (See § 129, and Roscher, Nationalökonomik des Ackerbaues, p. 43.)(809)

D. In the case also of those raw materials which are objects of occupation, and never of real production, as, for instance, minerals, a progressive public economy, by altering the different elements of price in an opposite direction, may leave their price on the whole unchanged. Here, indeed, the discovery of new and especially of rich natural stores may exert an incalculable influence; but such “accidents” underlie the laws of human development only to the extent that those ages which are intellectually most active are those also which are most industrious and fortunate in the discovery of their natural resources.(810)