Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 September 1876 — The Labor Price. [ARTICLE]

The Labor Price.

Price is a term ordinarily used by po- ' lltical economists to designate the value of any commodity, as expressed in money. Thus we say that the price of a bushel of wheat is two dollars, or that the price of a pound of butter is fifty cents. The meaning is that in the one case two dollars will buy the wheat, and that in the other case fifty cents wii) buy the butter. Those who have the articles to sell will exchange them for money upon these terms. This monetary value is the nominal value—value thus expressed or value in the nomenclature of money. It is, moreover, the value of which men usually think, because money is that one commodity which exchanges for all others, and, hence, has a universal purchasing power. What, then, is the cost, to the man who pays the sum, of the two dollars which he pays for the bushel of wheat? If we can answer this question we shall find what is the real price of the wheat to him. Let us suppose that, in order to get the money, he ga>e a day’s labor; and then the price of the wheat, as measured by his labor, k one day of such labor. He worked a day for the money, and then gave the money for the wheat. That is to say, he really bought the wheat with a day’s labor, simply using money as the medium of exchanging his services for the commodity. The real price to him is the labor price—namely, the amount of toil which he must undergo to procure the thing he wants. And what is true in this case is universally trite. Money itself is the product of labor. The labor which it takes to get R is die measure of its value. If it cost nothing, there 1b nothing for which k would be exchangeable. Adam Smitn, in his “ Wealth of Nations” (Book 1, Chap. 5), gives the following lucid statement of this great economical principle: The real price ot everything—what everything really costs to the man who wants to 4 acquire it—is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange It for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What Is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labor, as much as what we acquire by the toll of our Own body. That money or those goods, indeed, save us this toiL They conlin the valtffe of a certain quantity off labor which we exchrnge for what Is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money, that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labor which it can enable them to purchase or command. The elementary conditions of producing wealth are supplied by Nature; but the wealth itself is always the product of labor, either of the man who has it, or of some one else from whom he has derived it. All exchanges, when traced to (heir final analysis, are really exchanges of labor In its products. Men buy and sell labor in this concrete form. It hence fob lows that the real price which is paid for everything is, after all, the labor- pride*. If we suppose a bushel of wheat to be worth two dollars to-day and next year worth but one dollar, and that at the former period labor brings two dollars a day ana bat one dollar at the latter period, then, although the nominal price of both wheat and labor has greatly changed, there is no real change in the price of either, considered relatively to the other. At both periods the same amount of labor win Duy the same quantity of wheat and the same quantity of wheat will buy the same amount of labor. The only change that has occurred is in the monetary expression of value. The real price remains the same. If, on the other hand, the nominal or monetary price of wheat were to change, without any corresponding change in the nominal price of labor, so that it would take more or less than a day’s labor to buy a bushel f wheat, then the relations between the labor and the wheat would be altered. If the money price of the wheat went up, it would, require more labor to buy it; and if it went down, less labor would suffice for the purchase. A rise in commodity prices, as reckoned In money, without a corresponding rise in wages, is always an oppressive burden to those who work for wages. It costs them more to live, with no increase of means. When this rise is due to the character of the money in use, the laborer is sure to he one of the chief sufferers. Of all classes in the community, those who work for wages suffer most from the use of bad money. It disturbs the natural relation between labor and commodities—between the means at payment and the things to be paid for.— N. T. Independent.