When more water-power is wanted in a particular district than there are falls of water to supply it, persons will give an equivalent for the use of a fall of water. When there is more land wanted for cultivation than a place possesses, or than it possesses of a certain quality and certain advantages of situation, land of that quality and situation may be sold for a price, or let for an annual rent.
§ 2. The Second Requisite of Production, Labor.
It is now our purpose to describe the second requisite of production, labor, and point out that it can be either direct or indirect. This division and subdivision can be seen from the classification given below. Under the head of indirect labor are to be arranged all the many employments subsidiary to the production of any one article, and which, as they furnish but a small part of labor for the one article (e.g., bread), are subsidiary to the production of a vast number of other articles; and hence we see the interdependence of one employment on another, which comes out so conspicuously at the time of a commercial depression.
“We think it little to sit down to a table covered with articles from all quarters of the globe and from the remotest isles of the sea—with tea from China, coffee from 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 labor[102] 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 of its destined use: the labor of carrying the corn to market, and from market to the miller's, the flour from the miller's to the baker's, and the bread from the baker's to the place of its final consumption.
Besides the two classes of indirect laborers here mentioned, those engaged in producing materials and those in transportation, there are several others who are paid fractions out of the bread. Subsidiary to the direct labor of the bread-maker is the labor of all those who make the instruments employed in the process (as, e.g., the oven). Materials are completely changed in character by one use, as when the coal is burned, or the flour baked into bread; while an instrument, like an oven, is [pg 057] capable of remaining intact throughout many operations. The producer of materials and the transporter are paid by the bread-maker in the price of his coal and flour when left at his door, so that the price of the loaf is influenced by these payments. Those persons, moreover, who, like the police and officers of our government, act to protect property and life, are also to be classed as laborers indirectly aiding in the production of the given article, bread (and by his taxes the bread-maker helps pay the wages of these officials). Shading off into a more distant, although essential, connection is another class—that of those laborers who train human beings in the branches of knowledge necessary to the attainment of proper skill in managing the processes and instruments of an industry. The acquisition of the rudiments of education, and, in many cases, the most profound knowledge of chemistry, physics and recondite studies, are essential to production; and teachers are indirect laborers in producing almost every article in the market. In this country, especially, are inventors a class of indirect laborers essential to all ultimate production as it now goes on. The improvements in the instruments of production are the results of an inventive ability which has made American machinery known all over the world. They, too, as well as the teacher, are paid (a small fraction, of course) out of the ultimate result, by an indirect path, and materially change the ease or difficulty, cheapness or dearness, of production in nearly every branch of industry. In the particular illustration given they have improved the ovens, ranges, and stoves, so that the same or better articles are produced at a less cost than formerly. All these indirect laborers receive, in the way of remuneration, a fraction, some more, some less (the farther they are removed from the direct process), of the value of the final result.
§ 3. Of Capital as a Requisite of Production.
But another set of laborers are to be placed in distinct contrast with these, so far as the grounds on which they receive their remuneration is concerned. These are the men engaged previously in providing the subsistence, and articles by which the former classes of labor can carry on their operations.