Chapter I. Of The Requisites Of Production.

gives an interesting illustration of this principle. Bar-iron of the value of £1 became worth, when manufactured into—

It can not, however, be said of such manufactures as coarse cotton cloth, wherein the increased cost of raw cotton causes an immediate effect upon the price of the cloth, that the cost of the materials forms but a small portion of the cost of the manufacture.138

All the labor [not engaged in preparing materials] tends constantly and strongly toward diminution, as the amount of production increases. Manufactures are vastly more susceptible than agriculture of mechanical improvements and contrivances for saving labor. In manufactures, accordingly, the causes tending to increase the productiveness of industry preponderate greatly over the one cause which tends to diminish it; and the increase of production, called forth by the progress of society, takes place, not at an increasing, but at