correctly represented (money being supposed invariable as well as efficiency) by the money wages of the laborer, may be increased. The laborer may obtain greater comforts; wages in kind—real wages—may rise. Or the progress of population may force down cultivation to inferior soils and more costly processes; thus raising the cost of production, the value, and the price, of the chief articles of the laborer's consumption. On either of these suppositions the rate of profit will fall.
If the laborer obtains more abundant commodities only by reason of their greater cheapness, if he obtains a greater quantity, but not on the whole a greater cost, real wages will be increased, but not money wages, and there will be [pg 470] nothing to affect the rate of profit. But, if he obtains a greater quantity of commodities of which the cost of production is not lowered, he obtains a greater cost; his money wages are higher. The expense of these increased money wages falls wholly on the