… is from page 71 of Ronald Max Hartwell’s 1965 paper “The Causes of the Industrial Revolution: An Essay in Methodology,” as this paper is reprinted as chapter 3 in R.M Hartwell, ed., The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England (1967):
A freer economy meant the more effective working of the price mechanism; prices became more flexible and price changes became more efficient in promoting capital and labour mobility. In such circumstances profit became a more certain measure of economic efficiency, and enterprise was rewarded, making relative price changes effective in quickly encouraging or discouraging production.
DBx: Proponents of tariffs, subsidies, industrial policy, minimum wages, price ceilings, and inflation all in their own way, and for a variety of different and frequently conflicting ends, wish to distort the great system of communication – the price system – that is unmatched at both informing and inciting each of us to work as effectively as we can to help as many as we can of our fellow human beings.
