What has been said of printing, can be extended to every agent for the advancement of labor—from the nail and the mallet, up to the locomotive and the electric telegraph. Society enjoys all, by the abundance of its use, its consumption; and it enjoys all gratuitously. For as their effect is to diminish prices, it is evident that just so much of the price as is taken off by their intervention, renders the production in so far gratuitous. There only remains the actual labor of man to be paid for; and the remainder, which is the result of the invention, is subtracted; at least after the invention has run through the cycle which I have just described as its destined course. I send for a workman; he brings a saw with him; I pay him two dollars for his day's labor, and he saws me twenty-five boards. If the saw had not been invented, he would perhaps not have been able to make one board, and I would none the less have paid him for his day's labor. The usefulness, then, of the saw, is for me a gratuitous gift of nature, or rather, is a portion of the inheritance which, in common with my brother men, I have received from the genius of my ancestors. I have two workmen in my field; the one directs the handle of a plough, the other that of a spade. The result of their day's labor is very different, but the price is the same, because the remuneration is proportioned, not to the usefulness of the result, but to the effort, the [time, and] labor given to attain it.
I invoke the patience of the reader, and beg him to believe, that I have not lost sight of free trade: I entreat him only to remember the conclusion at which I have arrived: Remuneration is not proportioned to the usefulness of the articles brought by the producer into the market, but to the [time and] labor required for their production.[B]
[B] It is true that [time and] labor do not receive a uniform remuneration; because labor is more or less intense, dangerous, skilful, &c., [and time more or less valuable.] Competition establishes for each category a price current: and it is of this variable price that I speak.
I have so far taken my examples from human inventions, but will now go on to speak of natural advantages.
In every article of production, nature and man must concur. But the portion of nature is always gratuitous. Only so much of the usefulness of an article as is the result of human labor becomes the object of mutual exchange, and consequently of remuneration. The remuneration varies much, no doubt, in proportion to the intensity of the labor, of the skill, which it requires, of its being à-propos to the demand of the day, of the need which exists for it, of the momentary absence of competition, &c. But it is not the less true in principle, that the assistance received from natural laws, which belongs to all, counts for nothing in the price.
We do not pay for the air we breathe, although so useful to us, that we could not live two minutes without it. We do not pay for it, because nature furnishes it without the intervention of man's labor. But if we wish to separate one of the gases which compose it for instance, to fill a balloon, we must take some [time and] labor; or if another takes it for us, we must give him an equivalent in something which will have cost us the trouble of production. From which we see that the exchange is between efforts, [time and] labor. It is certainly not for hydrogen gas that I pay, for this is everywhere at my disposal, but for the work that it has been necessary to accomplish in order to disengage it; work which I have been spared, and which I must refund. If I am told that there are other things to pay for, as expense, materials, apparatus, I answer, that still in these things it is the work that I pay for. The price of the coal employed is only the representation of the [time and] labor necessary to dig and transport it.
We do not pay for the light of the sun, because nature alone gives it to us. But we pay for the light of gas, tallow, oil, wax, because here is labor to be remunerated;—and remark, that it is so entirely [time and] labor and not utility to which remuneration is proportioned, that it may well happen that one of these means of lighting, while it may be much more effective than another, may still cost less. To cause this, it is only necessary that less [time and] human labor should be required to furnish it.
When the water-boat comes to supply my ship, were I to pay in proportion to the absolute utility of the water, my whole fortune would not be sufficient. But I pay only for the trouble taken. If more is required, I can get another boat to furnish it, or finally go and get it myself. The water itself is not the subject of the bargain, but the labor required to obtain the water. This point of view is so important, and the consequences that I am going to draw from it so clear, as regards the freedom of international exchanges, that I will still elucidate my idea by a few more examples.