John Bright Quotes
The corn law was intended to keep wheat at the price of 80s. the quarter; it is now under 40s. the quarter.
Bright, John. Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by John Bright, M.P. Edited by James E. Thorold Rogers, vol. 2, Macmillan and Co., 1868.
Manava Dharma Shastra. Ancient Hindu India had what may well have been the most regulated mercantile economy of any society in history. All prices for all goods were to be set by the king. In order to prevent the stultifying effect of price controls, the Hindus required that the prices be reset very frequently to reflect various market conditions. It was a highly regulated form of capitalism. This text is a part of the Hindu Holy Texts. Hindus believe that Manu was a prophet whose text is revealed or inspired.
Hoover was the Food Administrator at that time. Although he gave lip service to the free market economy concept, he was proposing government price controls and rationing. When the free market was not functioning, at this time in his career, he was willing to use government controls and regulation. By the end of 1918 over 250,000 food-handling corporations, firms, and individuals were under Food Administration licenses. Meat, fish, poultry, eggs, butter, milk, potatoes, fresh and dried vegetables, and fruits, canned goods, the coarse grains and rice, vegetable oils, coffee, and such various commodities accessory to food-handling, as ice, ammonia (for ice-making), arsenic (for insecticides), jute bags, sisal, etc., were under direct control. Ironically, later when he was President and faced with the Great Depression, he had become much more rigid and would not “interfere” with the free, private market and use government to solve the national problems. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who did that after Hoover would not. At the time he gave this speech, Hoover was not very political and was more of a technocrat. It may have been that by the time he became President he was intellectually and politically locked in to Republican Party conservative economic ideology.
To the modern reader utterances such as this from a Conservative Prime Minister seem astounding. However, the Great Depression existed in Canada as well as the United States, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was not the only world leader who would reach the conclusion that business and capitalism must be profoundly regulated and the system changed if it was to be saved.
The Black Plague, which raged in Europe from 1347 to 1349, had left relatively few able bodied people alive. Given this shortage of labor there was a rapid inflation, especially to the distress of the landed class who had to pay much more for their food. The king therefore established what amounted to price controls, wage controls and forces labor. See {611125} and {611126}
This was one of the grossest classic protectionist schemes.
John Bright was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies.
