460 LABOUR, WAGKS, AND TRADES' UNIONS. 



was less literally, though not less implicitly obeyed. Individual man 

 does not always live immediately by the daily sweat of his own brow, 

 but the community does, and must ever continue, to live by the ac- 

 cumulated labour of its members. As, in course of time, luxuries 

 were added to the mere necessaries of life, and as amassed wealth 

 descended from father and son without the purchase-price of labour, 

 the richer man exchanged a portion of his goods for the labour of 

 those who were poorer than himself, and dispensed with a portion of 

 his superabundant luxuries, to avoid in his own person the general 

 penalty of humanity. 



This accumulation of commodities of exchangeable value is termed 

 CAPITAL, and capital therefore becomes an ingredient in the pro- 

 duction of commodities, and consequently in their price. 



Smith says, that " the real price of everything, what everything 

 really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble 

 of acquiring it." " the toil and trouble which it can save to him- 

 self, and which it can impose upon other people." 



But the price paid by a man of capital for any particular service per- 

 formed by a poorer man, is not to be considered as the precise sum at 

 which he values his freedom from the toil of personally performing 

 that service. Say, by way of example, that a rich man wishes to have 

 his field dug. The price lie pays the labourer for so doing we will 

 suppose is two shillings a day. But it is evident that two shillings 

 a day is not the precise amount at which he values his labour neces- 

 sary for digging that field ; for if so, upon the least advance of price 

 say to two shilling and sixpence a day he would rather prefer to dig 

 the field himself, than pay sixpence a day more than he valued his 

 freedom from toil at. 



Then, in this view of the case, what is there to prevent the labourer 

 charging two shillings and sixpence, or three shillings, or five shil- 

 lings, or any conceivable price, which the employer would be wil- 

 ling to give rather than work himself? COMPETITION; there 

 being always poor and unemployed hands ready, in case of such an 

 exorbitant demand, to offer their services at a lower rate. Compe- 

 tition of the majority, therefore, as in the market of commodities, so 

 also in the market of labour, is that which regulates the cost. And 

 the more extensive the competition, the less will be the marketable 

 price of the same labour at different points of time. 



Labour in its application is so connected with different degrees of 

 skill, and regulated by judgment, that in no two persons, in no 

 two occupations, is it precisely of the same value. An imprudent 

 man may spend much labour upon the production of a commodity 

 which may be little esteemed by the rest of the world ; and he will 

 either find himself unable to dispose of it at all, or be obliged to ex- 

 change it at a price much less than he could have procured for the 

 same amount of labour, had he directed it into more profitable 

 channels. 



The exchangeable value of labour, therefore, being fluctuating in 

 itself, in regard to other commodities, cannot be considered in the 

 light of the sole standard of value, a standard being necessarily, by 

 the definition of the word, fixed and unchangeable. 



