unusually deficient. There had been no falling off in the productiveness of the farming industry of the United States to cause the increased price; but the relative demand of other industrial groups for wheat, the product of the farming industry, raised the exchange value of wheat, and so increased the industrial rewards of those engaged as laborers and capitalists in farming. So it is to be concluded that since there is no free movement of labor and capital between non-competing groups, wages and profits may constantly remain at rates which are not in correspondence with the actual sacrifice, or cost, to labor and capital in different groups; hence, their products do not exchange for each other in proportion to their costs of production. Reciprocal demand is the law of their value. It will be said, at once, that the foregoing conception of cost of production is entirely opposed to the language of practical men of affairs. They constantly speak of higher or lower wages as increasing their cost of production, or as affecting their ability to compete with foreigners. So universal a usage implies a foundation of truth which demands attention. Wages do represent cost to the capitalist, that is, the chief part of the outlay he makes in order to get a given return; but we have already seen this, and, in the language of Political Economy, termed it “cost of labor” to the capitalist. When the business world use the phrase cost of production, they use it in the sense of cost of labor, as hitherto explained. When they are obliged by strikers to pay more wages, they say that it increases their “cost of production,” meaning the cost to them of getting their product, and that it affects their profits. This, then, will show that there is no objection to be urged, in its true sense, against the phrase cost of production, arising from its misuse in the common language of business.