MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 33 



the specific ini pa iniient of well-bein<> tlint. as labor-cost, must attend 

 the task incident to its prodnction. 



Out of tlie marked variations in the relative (•ai)acities of each 

 individnal to snrnionnt tlie obstacles and hindrances of various sorts 

 that lie in the way of and obstruct his free acquisition and use of 

 needful, but not freely available products, co-ordinating with the 

 no less marked variations and dirt'erences in the relative capaci- 

 ties of his associates to suraiount the same, like, or equivalent 

 hindrances, has come the dirisiftii of labor. The sole incentive 

 to an equitable division of labor is found in profit, which, in 

 its last analysis, is the saving in cost that by right accrues to 

 each party to an equitable exchange as a result of his relatively 

 higher capacity — and correspondingly lower cost — in the produc- 

 tion of the thing })arted with, when compared with his relatively 

 lower capacity — ^and correspondingly higher cost — in the produc- 

 tion of the product acquired through the exchange. 



Through what Jevons has aptly termed the "Mechanism of an 

 Exchange," the division of labor is most equitably, conveniently 

 and advantageously effected by and through an exchange of labor's 

 products, the one for the other, on the only fair and equitable basis, 

 viz., that of substantially exact equivalence in the gravities of the 

 two hindrances it has been, or will be, necessary for labor to sur- 

 mount in order to render the two products thus exchanged available 

 for that purpose. 



From the mutual benefits and advantages that, as profit, by 

 right accrue to each party to an intelligent division of labor, by 

 and through an equitable exchange of labor's products, has come 

 the fact of trade. While from the fact of trade has developed the 

 urgent need of a familiar and theoretically constant unit, or stand- 

 ard of surmountable hindrance, in terms of which the relative gravi- 

 ties of all known hindrances to human endeavor may be intelli- 

 gibly expressed ; thus affording data, in the convenient form of a 

 common unit, for an intelligent determination of the relative gravi- 

 ties of widely different and apparently unrelated hindrances, upon 

 equivalence in Avhich, in the very nature of the case, the equitable 

 division of labor, through an exchange of its ]>roducts, necessarily 

 depends. Hence money. 



If, now, in any given exchange, the two hindrances it has been 

 necessary for labor to surmount in order to render the i)roducts in- 

 volved in the exchange available for that purpose are in fact, as 

 they certainly are in theory, equivalents in gravity, then must it 

 follow that the labor necessary to the task of producing one of them 

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