Pitman's Dictionary of Economic and Banking Terms (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ...That is, the expense of making coinage depreciated in weight again good is borne by the whole community. The provision in the Act of 1891 seems to have been quite effective in maintaining the full weight of our gold coinage. LOCALIZATION OF INDUSTRY. The concentration of particular industries in special places, either naturally or as the result of man's activity, specially suited for those industries. It is a territorial division of labour: a branch of the world's work will be most economically performed where the aptitudes, capacities, and the resources of the people provide for it most advantages. In these days, by the emigration of men and the migration of capital, goods are being more and more produced by the fittest men in the fittest places. "The natural advantages which one country has over another in producing particular commodities are sometimes so great that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them. By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hot walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine, too, can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland P " (A.S.) LUXURIES. Commodities that satisfy a desire but which cannot be regarded either as necessaries of life or as conducing to its comfort. fonissances superflues (enjoyments we might well dispense with) is the French term. A strict definition is, of course, not to be sought, since the luxuries of one class may be only comforts or even necessaries to another class; and what were thought luxuries at...