Chapter 15

On the Influence of Verification on Price

181.  The money price of an article at any given period is usually stated to depend upon the proportion between the supply and the demand.  The average price of the same article during a long period, is said to depend, ultimately, on the power of producing and selling it with the ordinary profits of capital.  But these principles, although true in their general sense, are yet so often modified by the influence of others, that it becomes necessary to examine a little into the disturbing forces.

182.  With respect to the first of these propositions, it may be observed, that the cost of any article to the purchaser includes, besides the ratio of the supply to the demand, another element, which, though often of little importance, is, in many cases, of great consequence.  The cost, to the purchaser, is the price he pays for any article, added to the cost of verifying the fact of its having that degree of goodness for which he contracts.  In some cases the goodness of the article is evident on mere inspection:  and in those cases there is not much difference of price at different shops.  The goodness of loaf sugar, for instance, can be discerned almost at a glance; and the consequence is, that the price is so uniform, and the profit upon it so small, that no grocer is at all anxious to sell it; whilst, on the other hand, tea, of which it is exceedingly difficult to judge, and which can be adulterated by mixture so as to deceive the skill even of a practised eye, has a great variety of different prices, and is that article which every grocer is most anxious to sell to his customers.

The difficulty and expense of verification are, in some instances, so great, as to justify the deviation from well-established principles.  Thus it is a general maxim that Government can purchase any article at a cheaper rate than that at which they can manufacture it themselves.  But it has nevertheless been considered more economical to build extensive flour-mills (such are those at Deptford), and to grind their own corn, than to verify each sack of purchased flour, and to employ persons in devising methods of detecting the new modes of adulteration which might be continually resorted to.

183.  Some years since, a mode of preparing old clover and trefoil seeds by a process called doctoring, became so prevalent as to excite the attention of the House of Commons.  It appeared in evidence before a committee, that the old seed of the white clover was doctored by first wetting it slightly, and then drying it with the fumes of burning sulphur, and that the red clover seed had its colour improved by shaking it in a sack with a small quantity of indigo; but this being detected after a time, the doctors then used a preparation of logwood, fined by a little copperas, and sometimes by verdigris; thus at once improving the appearance of the old seed, and diminishing,