means of enjoyable existence be more and more largely diffused, while yet the great class at the base of the whole might increase in numbers only, and not in comfort nor in cultivation. We must, therefore, in considering the effects of the progress of industry, admit as a supposition, however greatly we deprecate as a fact, an increase of population as long-continued, as indefinite, and possibly even as rapid, as the increase of production and accumulation.
§ 2. Tendency to a Decline of the Value and Cost of Production of all Commodities.
The changes which the progress of industry causes or presupposes in the circumstances of production are necessarily attended with changes in the values of commodities.
The permanent values of all things which are neither under a natural nor under an artificial monopoly depend, as we have seen, on their cost of production. (1.) But the increasing power which mankind are constantly acquiring over nature increases more and more the efficiency of human exertion, or, in other words, diminishes cost of production. All inventions by which a greater quantity of any commodity can be produced with the same labor, or the same quantity with less labor, or which abridge the process, so that the capital employed needs not be advanced for so long a time, lessen the cost of production of the commodity. As, however, value is relative, if inventions and improvements in production were made in all commodities, and all in the same degree, there would be no alteration in values.
As for prices, in these circumstances they would be affected or not, according as the improvements in production did or did not extend to the precious metals. If the materials of money were an exception to the general diminution of cost of production, the values of all other things would fall in relation to money—that is, there would be a fall of general [pg 478] prices throughout the world. But