1. The three minor writers, McCulloch, James Mill, and, to a less degree, Torrens, were imitative expounders of the Ricardian political economy. While their views were not identical with those of Ricardo, they were accustomed to explain themselves by pointing out wherein they differed from the master. In this history they are of interest because each endeavored to state the labor-cost theory in a more arbitrary form than did Ricardo himself. This chapter could well be entitled, “The Labor Theory Running Riot.” McCulloch and Mill endeavored to reason out of existence the qualification Ricardo placed in the doctrine on account of interest, and Torrens thought he avoided the difficulty by stating that value is determined by cost in “accumulated labor.” An interesting fact in the literary history of the labor theory, and one which, to the best of my knowledge, has not hitherto been brought to light, is that McCulloch anticipated Karl Marx’s solution of the “organic composition of capital” problem. Marx closed his theory of value, in the first volume of _Das Kapital_, with the confession that, to all _appearances_, the facts of market values contradict the theory. He promised, however, to show, in a later volume, that in _reality_ there is no contradiction.[74] When the second volume appeared only to defer to the third the promised solution, “a regular prize essay contest” sprang up in Germany, and endured for ten years, in which the participants endeavored to forecast what Marx’s solution would be. No one was successful.[75] The answer to the enigma, as it appeared in the posthumous third volume of _Das Kapital_, is precisely the one McCulloch gave to the same question. 1. MCCULLOCH. 2. We shall not retrace the general lines of Ricardo’s exposition as they reappear in McCulloch’s writings.[76] In the course of the numerous editions of his _Principles_, and in his other observations upon value, this writer managed to commit nearly every conceivable blunder that could connect itself with the labor theory.[77] From time to time, Ricardo mildly reproved his disciple for his rigidity: “You go a little farther than I go in estimating the value of commodities by the quantity of labour required to produce them. You appear to admit of no exception or qualification whatever, whereas I am always willing to allow that some of the variations in the relative value of commodities may be referred to causes distinct from the quantity of labour necessary to produce them.”[78]