iv CAPITAL THE MOTHER OF LABOUR. 185 



Surely no one will give him one-tenth of the capi- 

 tal disbursed in wages, perhaps not so much even 

 as the prime cost of the raw materials. There- 

 fore, though the assertion that " the creation of 

 value does not depend on the finishing of the pro- 

 duct " may be strictly true under certain circum- 

 stances, it need not be and is not always true. 

 And, if it is meant to imply or suggest that the 

 creation of value in a manufactured article does 

 not depend upon the finishing of that article, a 

 more serious error could hardly be propounded. 



Is there not a prodigious difference in the 

 value of an uncaulked and in that of a finished 

 ship; between the value of a house in which only 

 the tiles of the roof are wanting and a finished 

 house; between that of a clock which only lacks 

 the escapement and a finished clock? 



As ships, house, and clock, the unfinished ar- 

 ticles have no value whatever that is to say, no 

 person who wanted to purchase one of these things, 

 for immediate use, would give a farthing for either. 

 The only value they can have, apart from that 

 of the materials they contain, is that which they 

 possess for some one who can finish them, or for 

 some one who can make use of parts of them for 

 the construction of other things. A man might 

 buy an unfinished house for the sake of the bricks; 

 or he might buy an incomplete clock to use the 

 works for some other piece of machinery. 



Thus, though every stage of the labour be- 



