who erected the
buildings and machinery, by the help of which they are made; fifthly,
the labour of the retail dealer, and of many others, whom it is
unnecessary further to particularize. The aggregate sum of these various
kinds of labour, determines the quantity of other things for which these
stockings will exchange, while the same consideration of the various
quantities of labour which have been bestowed on those other things,
will equally govern the portion of them which will be given for the
stockings.

To convince ourselves that this is the real foundation of exchangeable
value, let us suppose any improvement to be made in the means of
abridging labour in any one of the various processes through which the
raw cotton must pass, before the manufactured stockings come to the
market, to be exchanged for other things; and observe the effects which
will follow. If fewer men were required to cultivate the raw cotton, or
if fewer sailors were employed in navigating, or shipwrights in
constructing the ship, in which it was conveyed to us; if fewer hands
were employed in raising the buildings and machinery, or if these when
raised, were rendered more efficient, the stockings would inevitably
fall in value, and consequently command less of other things. They
would fall, because a less quantity of labour was necessary to their
production, and would therefore exchange for a smaller quantity of those
things in which no such abridgment of labour had been made.

Economy in the use of labour never fails to reduce the relative value of
a commodity, whether the saving be in the labour necessary to the
manufacture of the commodity itself, or in that necessary to the
formation of the capital, by the aid of which it is produced. In either
case the price of stockings would fall, whether there were fewer men
employed as bleachers, spinners, and weavers, persons immediately
necessary to their manufacture; or as sailors, carriers, engineers, and
smiths, persons more indirectly concerned. In the one case, the whole
saving of labour would fall on the stockings, because that portion of
labour was wholly confined to the stockings; in the other, a portion
only would fall on the stockings, the remainder being applied to all
those other commodities, to the production of which the buildings,
machinery, and carriage, were subservient.

In every society the capital which is employed in production, is
necessarily of limited durability. The food an