Let us, for a moment, leave ground-rent out of the question entirely, and suppose a nation's economy whose production is conducted by eleven undertakers employed on different commodities. Let us suppose that undertaker No. 1 uses machinery exclusively and employs only as many workmen as are strictly necessary to look after it, that undertaker No. 2 has a somewhat larger number of workmen and a somewhat smaller amount of fixed capital, etc.; and that this increase in the number of workmen and decrease in the amount of fixed capital continues until we reach undertaker No. 11, who employs all his capital in the payment of wages. If now, the rate of wages were to rise, and the interest on capital to fall in the same proportion, the commodities produced by undertaker No. 11 would rise most in price, and those of No. 1 decline most. In the case of undertaker No. 6, the opposing influences would probably balance each other, and if the producers of money belonged to this sixth class, it would be very easy to get a view of the whole change in the circumstances of production, in the money-price of the different commodities.[197-4] [Footnote 197-1: Compare _Adam Smith_, I, ch. 7, fin. This relative increase or decrease of one branch of income at the expense or to the advantage of another, should be distinguished from the absolute change of its amount which does not affect the cost of production. Thus, for instance, when the rent of land indeed increases, but in consequence of a simultaneous improvement in agriculture, a decline in the rate of interest, and an enhancement of the price of wheat is avoided (§ 157). So, too, when individual wages increase on account of the greater skill and energy of labor, but the same quantity and quality of labor do not become dearer (§ 172 seq.); and lastly, when the rate of interest remaining unaltered, the receipts of capitalists are increased by reason of an increase of their capital (§ 185).] [Footnote 197-2: After the great plague in the 14th century in England, when all the products of labor became dearer, skins and wool fell largely in price: _Rogers_, I, § 400.] [Footnote 197-3: Anyone who carefully reads all the five divisions of _Ricardo's_ first chapter will soon find that this great thinker rightly understood the foregoing, although the great abstractness and hypothetical nature of his conclusions might easily lead the reader astray. The proposition which closes the second part, and which has been so frequently misunderstood by his disciples, can be maintained only on the supposition that the prices of all commodities hitherto have been made up of equal proportions of rent, capital and wages. But think of Brussels lace and South American skins!]