land-area, the only quality that can be measured without dispute. To attempt to measure the other varying so-called values of land in terms of a fluctuating unit of value is piling confusion on confusion.
Land area, then, is not value; but it is a measurable dimension of value.
Labor. This factor has been defined by economists with the utmost finality and prejudice in some cases, and with the utmost caution and open-mindedness in others. Adam Smith calls it the original purchase money that was paid for all things. Gide rejects it as a measure of value because we have no dynamometer by which to measure it.[1] With this significant word “dynamometer” he showed that he saw what was needed; but he concludes that we have to be content with gold and silver as measures of value, though he states that we may try to rectify the errors to which they give rise. The Physiocrats reserved the term labor almost purely for the gleaning of the products of land, disregarding more important mental effort. Fourier, the economist, distinguishes between attractive labor and painful labor, as though the functions of the North and South magnetic poles had some competitive claim to consideration—yet he was very close to an important truth![2] Karl Marx insists that the value of any article is the amount of labor necessary for its production, and that value is human labor crystallized. Value is so definitely human labor in motion that this is very like insisting upon hydraulic value being delivered at the tradesman’s entrance in forms of blocks of ice, so that it may be weighed and measured.[3] Marx came much nearer the simple truth when he stated that the quantity of labor is measured by its duration. Here is a spontaneous recognition of the factor of time. When he speaks of the intensity of labor he seems almost to recognize the equally con-
- ↑ “Political Economy,” Charles Gide. 3rd edition, 1913, page 61. Translated by E. Jacobsen. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.
- ↑ See page 66.
- ↑ Robert Sibley, editor of the Journal of Electricity, published by McGraw-Hill Co. of California, San Francisco, in explaining to the layman the significance of a foot-pound second, gives him this picture of blocks of ice.
