And why? Because that element enables us, by paying for ‹one›, to save ‹two›. Because, by its very presence, it shows clearly that natural forces have concurred in the final result, without our having had to pay for their co-operation; and the consequence is, that the same general utility is placed at our disposal, while at the same time a certain portion of gratuitous utility has, happily for us, been substituted for onerous utility; and, in short, the price of the product has been reduced. We acquire it with a less proportion of our own labour, and, what happens to society at large, is just what would happen to an isolated individual who should succeed in realizing an ingenious invention. Suppose the case of a common artisan, who earns four francs a-day. With two francs,—that is to say, with half-a-day’s labour, he purchases a pair of cotton stockings. Were he to try to procure these stockings by his own direct labour, I sincerely believe that his whole life would not suffice for the work. How, then, does it happen that his half-day’s work pays for all the ‹human services› which have been rendered to him on this occasion? According to the law of ‹service for service›, why is he not forced to give several years’ labour? For this reason, that the stockings are the result of ‹human services›, of which natural agents, by the intervention of Capital, have enormously diminished the proportion. Our artisan, however, pays not only for the actual labour of all those who have concurred in the work, but also the interest of the capital by means of which the co-operation of nature was procured; and it is worthy of remark, that, without this last remuneration, or were it held to be illegitimate, capital would not have been employed to secure the assistance of the natural agents. There would have been in the product only onerous utility; for in that case the commodity would have been the exclusive result of human labour, and our artisan would have been brought back to the point whence he started,—that is to say, he would have been placed in the [p210] dilemma of either dispensing with the stockings, or of paying for them the price of several years’ labour.