Search -
CONVERS PRINCIPAL SUBJECT (The Neglected American economists)
CONVERS PRINCIPAL SUBJECT - The Neglected American economists Author:Elder Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: tain intrinsic value independent of changes in trade prices, else it could not at any time command a price in exchange ; its possibilities, as well as its fruits... more », are estimated in its valuation in business. T. Yes, but remember that the benefits which it affords are just what it yields at and for the time. A man may own lands or stocks that have been, and may again be, worth thousands of dollars in market, but suppose that, during a business revulsion, they yield him nothing, would you call him wealthy; and what would you say of his welfare ? If well-being is really the meaning of the word wealth, he may live and die in destitution in spite of nominal past or future valuations. A man is wealthy whose property yields him the means of commanding an abundance of the commodities and services he requires. Our definition, therefore, holds firmly against all the accidents which affect the subject. Labor is the source of wealth or welfare, because it forces products or the yield of property. CHAPTER III. THE GROWTH OF WEALTH—ITS AGENCIES. T. Assuming, for the present, that wealth grows in all well- constituted societies, and, in proportion to their social and industrial development, we will get proof and the use of the proposition by examining the laws operative in the process. Let me give you an index to the several heads of the inquiry : — We may accept Adam Smith's aphorism, that " labor is the first price—the original purchase-money—that is paid for everything ;" taking care not to abandon, as Smith did, this fundamental principle, by limiting its force to that " rude stage of society which precedes the accumulation of stock and the appropriation of land." Mr. Carey's doctrine of labor value in all production is the proper correction of Smith's foundation principle, and unde...« less