Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical, and Explanatory Notes, and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy
John Stuart Mill · en
It is now our purpose to describe the second requisite of
production, labor, and point out that it can be either direct or
indirect. This division and subdivision can be seen from the
classification given below. Under the head of indirect labor are
to be arranged all the many employments subsidiary to the
production of any one article, and which, as they furnish but a
small part of labor for the one article (e.g., bread), are
subsidiary to the production of a vast number of other articles;
and hence we see the interdependence of one employment on another,
which comes out so conspicuously at the time of a commercial
depression.
“We think it little to sit down to a table covered with articles
from all quarters of the globe and from the remotest isles of the
sea—with tea from China, coffee from Brazil, spices from the East,
and sugar from the West Indies; knives from Sheffield, made with
iron from Sweden and ivory from Africa; with silver from Mexico
and cotton from South Carolina; all being lighted with oil brought
from New Zealand or the Arctic Circle. Still less do we think of
the great number of persons whose united agency is required to
bring any one of these finished products to our homes—of the
merchants, insurers, sailors, ship-builders, cordage and sail
makers, astronomical-instrument makers, men of science, and
others, before a pound of tea can appear in our market.”(101)
The labor(102) which terminates in the production of an article fitted for
some human use is either employed directly about the thing, or in previous
operations destined to facilitate, perhaps essential to the possibility
of, the subsequent ones. In making bread, for example, the labor employed
about the thing itself is that of the baker; but the labor of the miller,
though employed directly in the production not of bread but of flour, is
equally part of the aggregate sum of labor by which the bread is produced;
as is also the labor of the sower, and of the reaper. Some may think that
all these persons ought to be considered as employing their labor directly
about the thing; the corn, the flour, and the bread being one substance in
three different states. Without disputing about this question of mere
language, there is still the plowman, who prepared the ground for the
seed, and whose labor never came in contact with the substance in any of
its states; and the plow-maker, whose share in the result was still more
remote. We must add yet another kind of labor; that of transporting the
produce from the place of its production to the place of its destined use:
the labor of carrying the corn to market, and from market to the miller’s,
the flour from the miller’s to the baker’s, and the bread from the baker’s
to the place of its final consumption.