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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: requisite every farmer would consider a dead loss.[5] But in silver
mining [operations] the universal complaint is the want of hands.
Indeed there is no analogy between this and other industries. With an
increase in the number of bronze-workers articles of bronze may become
so cheap that the bronze-worker has to retire from the field. And so
again with ironfounders. Or again, in a plethoric condition of the
corn and wine market these fruits of the soil will be so depreciated
in value that the particular husbandries cease to be remunerative, and
many a farmer will give up his tillage of the soil and betake himself
to the business of a merchant, or of a shopkeeper, to banking or
money-lending. But the converse is the case in the working of silver;
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