Book I: Chapter 6

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE COMPONENT PART OF THE PRICE OF COMMODITIES.

In that early and rude state of society which precedes both the accumulation
of stock and the appropriation of land, the proportion between the
quantities of labour necessary for acquiring different objects, seems to be
the only circumstance which can afford any rule for exchanging them for one
another. If among a nation of hunters, for example, it usually costs twice
the labour to kill a beaver which it does to kill a deer, one beaver should
naturally exchange for or be worth two deer. It is natural that what is
usually the produce of two days or two hours labour, should be worth double
of what is usually the produce of one day's or one hour's labour.

If the one species of labour should be more severe than the other, some
allowance will naturally be made for this superior hardship; and the produce
of one hour's labour in the one way may frequently exchange for that of two
hour's labour in the other.

Or if the one species of labour requires an uncommon degree of dexterity
and ingenuity, the esteem which men have for such talents, will naturally
give a value to their produce, superior to what would be due to the time
employed about it. Such talents can seldom be acquired but in consequence of
long application, and the superior value of their produce may frequently be
no more than a reasonable compensation for the time and labour which must be
spent in acquiring them. In the advanced state of society, allowances of
this kind, for superior hardship and superior skill, are commonly made in
the wages of labour ; and something of the same kind must probably have
taken place in its earliest and rudest period.

In this state of things, the whole produce of labour belongs to the
labourer; and the quantity of labour commonly employed in acquiring or
producing any commodity, is the only circumstance which can regulate the
quantity of labour which it ought commonly to purchase, command, or exchange
for.

As soon as stock has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of
them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom
they will supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit
by the sale of their work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the
materials. In exchanging the complete manufacture either for money, for
labour, or for other goods, over and above what may be sufficient to pay the
price of the materials, and the wages of the workmen, something must be given
for the profits of the undertaker of the work, who hazards his stock in this
adventure. The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore,
resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays