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made of a stone fastened to a stick with a thong. He accomplishes the structure of a canoe, and, no longer tied to the shore, may coast at his pleasure, or put out from land in search of larger fish in the deep water. He has the aid of one natural agent, in the capacity of water, to float his canoe, but it requires muscular power to propel it by the paddle. When he has learned to erect a sail, the labour of propelling his boat is performed by the wind. He can extend his voyages to a distance—the food which was required to support a man who paddles is saved-and the labour thus superseded can be applied directly in the production of food, or indirectly, in a larger measure, in the manufacture of boats and sails, and bows and arrows, which enable a third person to acquire food in a less time than he could by his direct efforts. We may well suppose that the power of the fisherman is increased tenfold. Having secured in a single day as many pounds of fish as formerly cost him the labour of ten, and having the ability to carry a cargo, he sails around the island and brings-to opposite the hut of the hunter, and proposes again to traffic with him for venison. The hunter finds it to his interest to exchange venison, that cost him ten hours' labour, for fish that he, without a boat, would expend ten hours in procuring, although it actually cost the fisherman but one. The boatman, under an equal disadvantage with respect to deer-killing, for lack of a bow, reasons in the same way. Each measures the value of the commodity he would purchase, by the expenditure of trouble it would require to produce it himself, and which he saves by procuring it through barter. He measures the value of the article he parts with by the labour which it will cost him to reproduce it. He would count as nothing that which cost him nothing, as being the result of the gratuitous co-operation of natural agents. Nine-tenths of the fish and nine-tenths of the venison, will be so reckoned in the case we have supposed. Each party having equally effective machinery, will exchange upon equal terms-labour for labour of equal average duration and intensity. The result will be, that one will obtain ten times the fish, and the other ten times the venison that he would have done, without the barter. The profit resulting from the gratuitous concurrence of all the natural agents brought into activity, is thus equally distributed for the common benefit.

We have thus far contemplated the case of parties to an exchange, each of whom had a practical monopoly of a particular kind of machinery, and of the natural forces which are made active by means of its possession. But such a monopoly is necessarily of brief continuance. The man who has been released from the toil of rowing, and left free to construct boats, will soon construct one for himself, and he and the original fisherman will go to the hunter to find a market for their fish. Each of them is disposed to get all the venison that he can; but each of them is willing to give the product of anything less than ten hours' labour in fishing, rather than expend that length of time in procuring for himself as much venison, as costs the huntsman the labour of but one hour. The effect of their competition is, to give the latter the entire benefit of the co-operation of the wind and water in reducing the labour cost of fish. He obtains the fish at the cost of procuring them, under the existing circumstances, and with the aids derived from natural forces, and the qualities of matter which have been brought into use, at the time they are offered for traffic.

The rule which governs a trade between savages, prevails at all times and in all places. Nothing will exchange for more labour, or for the product of more labour, than is necessary to reproduce it. The seller would fain get more, perhaps, because he expended more; but the inducement to the purchaser to obtain a commodity by exchange, is, that he may spare himself the trouble of making it, and getting it to the place where it is offered, by his own exertions.

Twenty years ago, a red paper box, containing a few sulphur matches, and a phial of acid, by which they were ignited, sold for a York shilling. Now, as many friction matches, of superior quality, in a brown paper box, are sold for a half-penny. No man doubts that, if a box of matches should chance to have lingered upon a grocer's shelf for twenty years, he would now be compelled to sell it for the half-penny, which would buy an equal quantity of a more convenient article. It would be fruitless to him to prove what it cost him. The ready answer would be, that in the meantime, by improved chemical and mechanical combinations, twenty-five boxes had come to be made by the same expenditure of human labour as his one required in its day. Out of every twenty-five, twenty-four

may be regarded as the contribution of Nature-who gives her aid, and asks no recompense-and one, as the result of muscular action, which expended food in developing itself, and which cannot be renewed unless the food is replaced; which, therefore, demands pay in food, or in something that can be exchanged for food.

Several of the Economists have sought to establish an equation. between Value, and the labour expended in the production or appropriation of commodities. They are thus compelled to attribute to human exertion, in certain cases, so much efficacy, and in others so little, in communicating value, as to render it worthless as a standard of measurement. If the case is put to them of a man who finds a precious stone while sauntering by the sea-shore, they are obliged either to deny that it has value, or to ascribe the value to the labour of stooping to pick it up. Such an accident may happen to a man who is working for a dollar a day, perfectly satisfied that such is the true value of his labour, and who would be assured by these very writers that such was the fact, if himself disposed to doubt it. One moment of his time, a single stretch of the arm, the value of which is an inappreciable fraction of a cent, suddenly becomes so valuable as to exceed a million-fold their value a moment before. It is as if one took the varying velocities of a comet as the standard for the regulation of chronometers. All such embarrassment is avoided, when we see that the cost of reproduction is the standard by which we actually compare values, and that it is equally applicable to the result of the enormously remunerated labour of the exceptional minute, and the moderate compensation for the rest of the toilsome day. The labourer who has been cracking stone to Macadamize a highway, can say, "The value of this heap of dull granite does not exceed a day's labour, for a day's labour will produce another such heap-the value of this glittering stone is a thousand days' labour, because it will cost at least a thousand days' labour to obtain another." The foundation of value is the same in both cases, and the unit of measure unchanged.*

* This doctrine is more fully elucidated by Mr. Carey, from whom it is derived, in his "Principles of Political Economy," vol. 1, page 15. Professor Ferrara, in his editorial introduction to the Italian translation of the works of Mons. Bastiat, says :

UTILITY-the capacity a thing has to satisfy a man's wants and desires is something more than Value, which is the sum of the obstacles to its attainment. The difference between them-between the gross amount of service, in the satisfaction of wants, that the possession of a thing will bestow, and the gross amount of labour which must be undertaken to secure it is the sum of the effects produced by the gratuitous operation of the forces of Nature. Men differ in their estimate of the utility of objects, which is the same thing as to say that they differ in their tastes and their judgment. In proportion as this estimate is high, the demand for a commodity. is urgent. In proportion as the obstacles to its production are reduced, that is, in proportion to the number and force of the natural agents, which are made to co-operate with, and to supersede muscular action, its value is diminished. PRICE is the notation in money of the point-a point fluctuating with every remove in time or space—at which an equilibrium establishes itself between the forces, moral, intellectual, and physical, which urge men to the acquisition of an article, and those which restrain them. There is, however,

"Carey, and after him, Bastiat, have introduced a formula, a postericri, that I believe destined to be universally adopted; and it is greatly to be regretted that the latter should have limited himself to occasional indications of it, instead of giving to it the importance so justly given by the former. In estimating the equilibrium between the cost to one's self and the utility to others, a thousand circumstances may intervene; and it is desirable to know if there be not among men a law, a principle of universal application. Supply and demand, rarity, abundance, &c., are all insufficient, and liable to perpetual exceptions. Carey has remarked, and with great sagacity, that this law is the labour saved, the cost of reproduction — an idea that is, as I think, most felicitous. It appears to me that there cannot arise a case, in which a man shall determine to make an exchange, in which this law will not be found to apply. I will not give a quantity of labour or pains, unless offered in exchange an utility equivalent; and I will not regard it as equivalent, unless I see that it will come to me at less cost of labour than would be necessary for its reproduction. I regard this formula as most felicitous; because, while on one side it retains the idea of cost, which is constantly referred to in the mind, on the other it avoids the absurdity to which we are led by the theory, which pretends to see everywhere a value equivalent to the cost of production; and, finally, it shows more perfectly the essential justice that governs us in our exchanges."

no absolute and fixed relation between money and labour. The discovery of gold in California and Australia, is reducing the labour cost of gold every day, and raising the price, measured in gold, of every other subject of barter. Price and Value are therefore no more synonymous than Value and Utility, in the sense we employ them. The former, Value, we are to be understood as always using to denote the relation between an object offered for exchange, and the quantity of human labour necessary to engineer the natural forces, and produce a like object.

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Such is the power of habit, that ideas which, from their real correspondence with the nature of things, are essentially natural and spontaneous, come, from the forms of language, to seem strained and artificial. It has thus happened, that because we have been accustomed to denote cost by the denominations of coined metal, even sagacious and instructed men come to reason, as if the reference of value to labour was a refinement of theory, instead of a practical truth that hampers every man in his daily dealings. "Labour," says Adam Smith, "was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things." This is assented to as a truism by men, who yet habitually reason in regard to the economical policy of nations, as if money and labour were now convertible terms, and as if the question whether a thing is cheap or dear, was at once and conclusively settled, by the mere statement of the amount of coin standing opposite to its name in the Price Current. Professing to be disciples of the author of "The Wealth of Nations," and invoking his authority as a sanction for their dogmas, they forget that he has written what all experience confirms, "At all times and places that is dear which is difficult to come at, or which it costs much labour to acquire; and that cheap which is to be had easily, or with very little labour:" and that labour, therefore, is alone the ultimate and real standard, by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.

The first general proposition in regard to Labour, is, that in the progress of society the value of all commodities tends to fall. They are continually attainable through exchange, by less and less of labour, because the gratuitous concert of natural agents, newly dis

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