Ricardo’s school employs, as the measure of the price of various kinds of goods, the quantity of work by which the goods themselves are produced.(778) It is evident that the same amount of common labor produces very different results, according as it is well or badly conducted. Hence Ricardo must have used the word labor in the sense of labor ideally adapted to its end. But in this way it would be impossible to reduce all the different kinds of labor to a common denominator.(779) Nor could the peculiar effects of capitalization, or the influence of the natural or artificial limitations of competition be estimated in terms of such a measure. (See §§ 47, 107, 189.)(780) Section CXXIX. The Precious Metals The Best Measure Of Prices. It is no more possible to find a constant measure of prices than it is to square the circle. (_J. B. Say._) If the two magnitudes to be compared are separated from each other in space but not in time, the precious metals constitute not only the best measure of their prices, but also a very good one. But the precious metals are subject to very sensible and accidental variations in price in long periods of time. If, therefore, we would compare sums of money belonging to different times with one another, we must first construct a price-current list of all the more important articles of commerce for the time in question, and in the quantities they are needed in every day life. We would next have to calculate the average of these mean prices, and thus to determine the relative value of the amounts to be estimated.(781) The person who should limit his comparison to a few species of commodities, says von Mangoldt, would lose in exactness what he gained in comprehensibility. In every such list, the wages of a day would occupy a very important place. The desire of exerting an influence over the lives and actions of other men, and the desire of relatively greater social distinction as compared with the social distinction of others, is very general; and there is scarcely any better evidence that it has been attained than the possession of the power of controlling a large number of days’ work. The man who can keep one thousand day laborers is certainly, in a politico-economical sense, an important personage. Besides, the height of day-wages has the most direct influence on the price of many other commodities.(782)