91 



(Table B.) 



value of all human services it is still more insignificant, as it 

 is estimated to bear the ratio to them of 19 to 19,334, or 

 0'098 per cent. Apart from its great utility in barter as a 

 means of facilitating exchanges, and its qualities of inde- 

 structibleness and portability, its principal utility is that of a 

 common measure of the value of all other commodities. It 

 is the established handy foot-rule for measuring the value of 

 all other commodities and services, but its own value bears 

 no _ more comparison in magnitude to the commodities of 

 which it is the standard measure than does the sixpenny 

 foot-rule of the builder or architect to the value of the costly 

 fabric whose various dimensions have been determined by 

 the useful but cheap foot-rule. It is necessary to bear this 

 in mind, because there exists a superstitious idea, widely held, 

 that the real element of economic value incorporated' in the 

 substance of gold (i.e., the cost of human services engaged in 

 procuring it) differs in some mysterious way from precisely 

 the same kind of real economic value incorporated in potatoes 

 or any other common commodity. 



The magnitude of economic value in any commodity is 

 not determined by its size or weight, nor by its abundance or 

 scarcity, but by the average economic cost, at any time, of the 

 useful services of man absorbed in its production, transport, 

 modification, etc., and thereafter incorporated in the par- 

 ticular substance or commodity in the same way that mortgage 

 title upon a valuable property incorporates the value of 

 mortgagee's money investment. 



If it can be shown, therefore, that the ratios of equivalent 

 exchange weights of different commodities with gold and 

 with each other are identical with the ratios of men's time 

 and services absorbed in producing them, the major couten- 

 tion of my argument will be established, viz.:— That cost of 

 Production — (not the Ratio of Supply and Demand, nor mere, 

 abundance or scarcity) — is the Primary Law which determines 

 and regulates Economic Price. 



The usual manner in which different commodities are 

 quoted in price lists, in relation to money value, makes it diffi- 

 cult to realise their relative values to each other. Thus one 

 commodity has its money value expressed in relation to a, 

 definite bulk, such as barrel, bushel, gallon. Another to 

 different units of weight, such as ounce, pound, cwt., ton ; 

 and the services of man, use of property, money, etc., are 

 always related to a measure of time, such as per hour, day, 

 week, month, or year. Commodities, however stated, can be 

 resolved into one quality common to them all, viz., weight, by 

 which they may be perfectly equated in the relation of the 

 ratios of equivalent weights to unit of value, i.e., to £1 , or, 



