labor; (2) the wages of labor (meaning thereby the real reward [or real wages] of the laborer); and (3) the greater or less cost179 [pg 229] at which the articles composing that real reward can be produced or purchased. It is plain that the cost of labor to the capitalist must be influenced by each of these three circumstances, and by no others. These, therefore, are also the circumstances which determine the rate of profit; and it can not be in any way affected except through one or other of them.
The efficiency of labor, in this connection, is highly important in its practical aspects, and as affecting the labor question, because as a function of cost of labor, that is, as an element affecting the quantity of things advanced to the laborers in comparison with the quantity of things returned to the employer, it includes the whole influence of machinery, labor-saving devices, and the results of invention. The quantity of produce depends, for a given advance, on the kind of machinery, the speed with which it is run, and on the general state of the arts and industrial inventions. The extent to which the productive capacity of a single laborer has been increased in the United States has been almost incredible. Instead of weaving cloth by hand, as was done a hundred years ago, “one operative in Lowell, working one year, can produce the cotton fabric needed for the year's supply of 1,500 to 1,800 Chinese.” Moreover, there is no question as to the fact that no nation in the world compares with ours in the power to invent, construct, and manage the most ingenious and complicated machinery. The inventive faculty belongs to every class in our country; and, in studying cost of labor, it must be well borne in mind that the efficiency of American labor, particularly as combined with mechanical appliances, is one of the great causes of our enormous production. The result of