Brazil, spices from the East, and sugar from the West Indies; knives from Sheffield, made with iron from Sweden and ivory from Africa; with silver from Mexico and cotton from South Carolina; all being lighted with oil brought from New Zealand or the Arctic Circle. Still less do we think of the great number of persons whose united agency is required to bring any one of these [pg 056] finished products to our homes—of the merchants, insurers, sailors, ship-builders, cordage and sail makers, astronomical-instrument makers, men of science, and others, before a pound of tea can appear in our market.”101
The labor102 which terminates in the production of an article fitted for some human use is either employed directly about the thing, or in previous operations destined to facilitate, perhaps essential to the possibility of, the subsequent ones. In making bread, for example, the labor employed about the thing itself is that of the baker; but the labor of the miller, though employed directly in the production not of bread but of flour, is equally part of the aggregate sum of labor by which the bread is produced; as is also the labor of the sower, and of the reaper. Some may think that all these persons ought to be considered as employing their labor directly about the thing; the corn, the flour, and the bread being one substance in three different states. Without disputing about this question of mere language, there is still the plowman, who prepared the ground for the seed, and whose labor never came in contact with the substance in any of its states; and the plow-maker, whose share in the result was still more remote. We must add yet another kind of labor; that of transporting the produce from the place of its production to the place