Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy
John Stuart Mill · en
The cost of labor, then, is, in the language of mathematics, a function of
three variables: (1) the efficiency of labor; (2) the wages of labor
(meaning thereby the real reward [or real wages] of the laborer); and (3)
the greater or less cost(179) at which the articles composing that real
reward can be produced or purchased. It is plain that the cost of labor to
the capitalist must be influenced by each of these three circumstances,
and by no others. These, therefore, are also the circumstances which
determine the rate of profit; and it can not be in any way affected except
through one or other of them.
The efficiency of labor, in this connection, is highly important
in its practical aspects, and as affecting the labor question,
because as a function of cost of labor, that is, as an element
affecting the quantity of things advanced to the laborers in
comparison with the quantity of things returned to the employer,
it includes the whole influence of machinery, labor-saving
devices, and the results of invention. The quantity of produce
depends, for a given advance, on the kind of machinery, the speed
with which it is run, and on the general state of the arts and
industrial inventions. The extent to which the productive capacity
of a single laborer has been increased in the United States has
been almost incredible. Instead of weaving cloth by hand, as was
done a hundred years ago, “one operative in Lowell, working one
year, can produce the cotton fabric needed for the year’s supply
of 1,500 to 1,800 Chinese.” Moreover, there is no question as to
the fact that no nation in the world compares with ours in the
power to invent, construct, and manage the most ingenious and
complicated machinery. The inventive faculty belongs to every
class in our country; and, in studying cost of labor, it must be
well borne in mind that the efficiency of American labor,
particularly as combined with mechanical appliances, is one of the
great causes of our enormous production. The result of this, for
instance, has been that, without lowering profits, although the
price of cloth has been greatly reduced, employers have been able
to raise the wages of operatives, and shorten their hours of
labor, because machinery has so vastly increased the production
for a given outlay. As one of a few facts showing this tendency in
the last fifty years, note the following table, taken from the
books of the Namquit cotton-mill in Bristol, Rhode Island:
Kind Of Labor. 1841. 1884.
Card-room help, per week $3.28 $5.40
Card-strippers, per week 4.98 6.00
Weavers, per week 4.75 6.00
Carding-room overseer, per week 7.00 13.50