As regards the soil, observe, this man would be placed in exactly the same situation which mankind at large occupied at the beginning. Now I fear not to be contradicted when I assert that this man would not produce a hectolitre of corn in two years: Ratio 15 to 600. And now we can measure the progress which has been made. As regards corn—and despite his being obliged to pay rent for his land, interest for his capital, and hire for his tools—or rather because he pays them—a labourer now obtains with 15 days’ work what he would formerly have had difficulty in procuring with 600 days’ work. The value of corn, then, measured by unskilled labour, has fallen from 600 to 15, or from 40 to 1. A hectolitre of corn has for man the same utility it had the day after the deluge—it contains the same quantity of alimentary substance—it satisfies the same want, and in the same degree. It constitutes an equal amount of ‹real wealth›—it does not constitute an equal amount of ‹relative wealth›. Its production has been transferred in a great measure ‹to the charge of nature›. It is obtained with ‹less› human ‹effort›. It renders ‹less service› in passing from hand to hand, it has less ‹value›. In a word, it has become ‹gratuitous›—not absolutely, but in the proportion of 40 to 1. And not only has it become ‹gratuitous›—it has become ‹common› to the same extent. For it is not to the profit of the person who produces the corn that 39-40ths of the effort have been annihilated, but to the advantage of the consumer, whatever be the kind of labour to which he devotes himself. ‹Clothing.›—We have here again the same phenomenon. A common day-labourer enters one of the warehouses at the Marais,[54] and there obtains clothing corresponding to twenty days of his labour, which we suppose to be unskilled. Were he to attempt to make [p231] this clothing himself, his whole life would be insufficient. Had he desired to obtain the same clothing in the time of Henri Quatre, it would have cost him three or four hundred days’ work. What then has become of this difference in the ‹value› of these stuffs in relation to the quantity of unskilled labour? It has been annihilated, because the ‹gratuitous› forces of nature now perform a great portion of the work, and it has been annihilated to the advantage of mankind at large.