perhaps buildings. These tools, materials, and buildings, however, were produced by labor and capital; and their value, like that of the article to the production of which they are subservient, depends on cost of production, which again is resolvable into labor. The cost of production of broadcloth does not wholly consist in the wages of weavers; which alone are directly paid by the cloth-manufacturer. It consists also of the wages of spinners and wool-combers, and, it may be added, of shepherds, all of which the clothier has paid for in the price of yarn. It consists, too, of the wages of builders and brick-makers, which he has reimbursed in the contract price of erecting his factory. It partly consists of the wages of machine-makers, iron-founders, and miners. And to these must be added the wages of the carriers who transported any of [pg 265] the means and appliances of the production to the place where they were to be used, and the product itself to the place where it is to be sold.
The value of commodities, therefore, depends principally (we shall presently see whether it depends solely) on the quantity of labor required for their production, including in the idea of production that of conveyance to the market. But since the cost of production to the capitalist is not labor but wages, and since wages may be either greater or less, the quantity of labor being the same, it would seem that the value of the product can not be determined solely by the quantity of labor, but by the quantity together with the remuneration, and that values must partly depend on wages.
Now the relation of one thing to another can not be altered by any cause which affects them both alike. A rise or fall of general wages is a fact which affects all commodities in the same manner, and therefore affords no reason why they should exchange for each other in one rather than in another proportion. Though there