Financial Times - A Journal of Trade Industry and Finance October 1938

The price that consumer usually_ pays for the prod jet is the market wholesale price plus costs and profits necessary to distribute the prmluct from the wholesaler to the retailer and from the retailer to the consumer. [...] In ninny instances the exchange is the result of an absolute advantage possessed by the eporiiug over the importing country in the production of the commodity in queIiim. [...] In others the reason for the flow of goods is less apparent but it is probably.eplained by the Nvorking out in practice of the economic doctrine of comparative cost the effect (4 which miry be seen in the import hp certain countries of goods which they are well. [...] In considering' the question it is tH well to hear in mind that t he channels of intenational trade while in places impeded by special_ restrict ions have not heel' in the main t he result of conscious control; rat her have they been eN (dyed as the outcome of the desire on the one hand of purchasers ltu∎ in the cheapest market and olc the other of sellers to sell in the dearest. [...] As pointed out in the article in last month's issue of this 'Review' dealing with the Spread of.1lanufacturing Industry the effect of the War on the delicate machinery of intern a Hotta] economic relations and the feeling of -uneasiness in certain countries resulting front the discovery of ihe extent to which they had been depedent upon external sources especially in the case of articles con