t essential to the establishment
of a common market. Market tariffs and other advantages and
disadvantages may place the competitors on an unequal footing.
Moreover, in order to form part of a market as helping to determine
the price, a business need not actively enter the field of
competition. Fear of the potential competition of outsiders often
keeps down prices to a level above which they would rise were it not
for the belief that such a rise would bring into active, effective
competition the outsider. England had until recently a monopoly of the
market for cotton goods in certain Eastern countries, but the price at
which she sold was determined by the possibility of rival French or
German merchants, as well as by the direct competition of the several
English firms. In certain commodities the market is conterminous with
the trade, that is, we have a world-market. This is the case with many
of the forms of money, the most abstract form of wealth, and the most
highly competitive.

Dealers in Stock Exchange securities, in the precious metals, are in
active, constant competition at all the great commercial centres of
the world. Other staple commodities, whose value is great, durable,
and portable, such as jewels, wheat, cotton, wool, have to all intents
and purposes a single market.

This world-market represents the fullest expansion due to modern
machinery of transport and exchange, the railway, steamship,
newspaper, telegraph, and the system of credit built up and maintained
by the assistance of these material agents.

The market-area for various commodities varies with the character of
these commodities, from the world-market for stock exchange securities
down to the minimum market consisting of a few neighbouring farmers
competing to sell their over-ripe plums or their skim-milk. The chief
qualities which determine the market-area are--

(_a_) _Extent of demand._--Things in universal or very wide demand,
which are at the same time durable, such as money, wool, wheat,
compete over very wide areas. Things specially accommodated to the
taste or use of a particular locality or a small class of individuals
will have a narrow market. This is the case with clothes of a
particular cut, and with many kinds of fabrics out of which clothes
are made. The market for certain classes of topographical books will
be confined to the limits of a county, though the book market for many
books is a world-market.

(_b_) _Portability