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The manufacturer, who reckons up his expenses of production and determines accordingly the price of the product, takes into account the wear and tear of the machinery. If a machine costs him £200 and wears itself out in ten years, he adds £10 a-year to the price of his goods, in order to replace the worn out machine by a new one when the ten years are up. In the same way we must reckon in the cost of production of simple labor the cost of its propagation; so that the race of laborers may be put in a position to multiply and to replace the worn out workers by new ones. Thus the wear and tear of the laborer must be taken into account just as much as the wear and tear of the machine.
The cost of production of simple labor amounts then to the cost of the laborer’s subsistence and propagation, and the price of this cost determines his wages. When we speak of wages we mean the minimum of wages. This minimum of wages holds good, just as does the determination by the cost of production of the price of commodities in general, not for the particular individual, but for the species. Individual laborers, indeed millions of them, do not receive enough to enable them to subsist and propagate; but the wages of the working class with all their fluctuations are nicely adjusted to this minimum.
Now that we are grounded on these general laws which govern wages just as much as the price of any other commodity, we can examine our subject more exactly.
