article we use or enjoy to-day, and will do so to the end of time.

And in buying the hammer, for example, the carpenter pays perhaps a dollar. But that dollar goes to pay for the work done by each and all this endless line of co-laborers in its production; and some part of it is the compensation for each man's share, from Adam the first man, to Smith the hardware merchant, of whom the carpenter bought it for the aforesaid price.

148. How determine their value.

But how came it that the carpenter paid just a dollar, that and no more, for the hammer? Did he or the hardware man go into any calculation of (1) the amount of human labor required, on the average, to produce the sixteenth of an ounce of gold (if that be the exact amount in a dollar ?) and (2) the exact amount of labor performed by each one of this endless line of co-operators from Adam down, determining and assigning to each the precise amount of his labor which reappears in this particular article of mechanism? Of course not: the thing would be impossible. But the law of supply and demand has done it for them, and made ready the price the moment the parties are ready to make the exchange.

149.

Tools reappear in other articles.

Now let us take a forward glance.

The carpenter uses the hammer. With every blow it wears out and approaches the day of its final consumption and return to the condition in which the intrinsic value it had received from all this labor is gone; and it remains a mere piece of iron consigned to rust, and the handle is used, perhaps, to kindle a fire with. Some part of the hammer, therefore, may be considered as going into every article the carpenter makes and uses the hammer in making; and he charges for every article and every day's work a little more for the use and wear of his hammer. And the purchaser of his wares pays back to him what he paid for the hammer-the wages of all the line of laborers whose work went into that hammer-and a little more, to pay for that share of his labor which also went into the articles, each one according to its proportion.

And the hammer goes into every article he makes in using it, in infinitesimally small quantities indeed, but it goes into them, and they as tools go into other articles in like manner, increasing in number in a geometrical ratio, carrying with them a constantly diminished and diminishing portion of the hammer, until it becomes distributed into portions inconceivably small and incalculable in number, ever

increasing in number and subdividing in amount, to the end of time, and the consummation of all things. Not a second's work, not an action of muscles in productive labor, is ever lost, or can be lost, any more than a particle of matter can be either created or destroyed by the urgency of human needs or the dexterity of human manipulations.

150. The basis of exchange.

Now, primarily, the labor that has gone into any article, is the basis or condition of its exchange. It created the exchangeable value, and determines its amount. Or, to be more exact, the average amount of labor needed to reproduce the article, is the average of the price at which it will be sold.

Mill, (B. I, Ch. II, § I,) after tracing this subdivision of labor, and remarking that the ultimate parts are exceedingly, incalculably small, adds, “such quantities are not worth taking into account for any practical purpose." But we may not treat them as nothing. They make up the exchangeable value, small as they are, and we might as well deny that the sun is the source of light and heat, because we can not compute the light of a single beam, or the heat of a single ray which it is constantly emitting, and by which the earth is made habitable-the glad abode of man.

Hence on his theory "value," which is but another name for "price," is but the measure of the difficulty of obtaining anything arising from the limitation of its quantity. This may be true enough in a certain sense, but it is non causa pro causa, not the truth which the case requires, even if it be a truth at all. Why is the quantity limited? possibly and undoubtedly by nature in some cases; but for the most part because no more labor has been expended in producing it. And what constitutes the difficulty of getting it? It can be only the work that has been performed, or rather that which is needed to reproduce it.

151. Elements of labor represented in every article.

It will be the most economical, and (if we exercise proper care) it will lead to no practical evils, to speak of the labor with which an article has been produced as the only item that is at all worth consideration. This labor may, without going too minutely into detail, be referred to three heads:

(1) The labor of the agriculturist and the miner in producing the raw material.

(2) The labor which each of the manufacturers and traders in various ways bestows on the article while in his hands.

(3) The distributive share of labor expended in

producing the tools and machinery, which were used in the work done on the commodity, and the food, clothing, etc., consumed by the laborers while producing it.

152. Bases of estimates between the buyer and the seller.

Each party to a contract estimates the commodities indeed by the labor they have cost. But then each party has a different standard by which to estimate this cost.

Each party estimates what he

has to sell by what it has cost him in skilled labor, and what he has to buy at what it would cost him in unskilled labor to produce it.

Thus, suppose it takes, on the whole, four days to make a hat and four to make a pair of shoes; that is, it takes the expert artizan that amount of time to produce them. But it will take the inexpert man more time, and the article will be inferior at that.

Now suppose it takes the hatter four days to make the hat and eight days to make the shoes-in all twelve days to make for himself a hat and a pair of shoes. In like manner it would take the shoemaker four days to make for himself a pair of shoes,