cost of production: the value and price of the produce being regulated by the cost of production to those producers who have no advantages; by the return to that portion of agricultural capital the circumstances of which are the least favorable.
§ 3. —Nor in the law of Profits.
Wages and rent being thus regulated by the same principles when paid in money, as they would be if apportioned in kind, it follows that Profits are so likewise. For the surplus, after replacing wages and paying rent, constitutes Profits.
We found, in the last chapter of the Second Book, that the advances of the capitalist, when analyzed to their ultimate elements, consist either in the purchase or maintenance of labor, or in the profits of former capitalists; and that, therefore, profits in the last resort depend upon the Cost of Labor, falling as that rises, and rising as it falls. Let us endeavor to trace more minutely the operation of this law.
There are two modes in which the Cost of Labor, which is