lause was adopted was a bitter disappointment to Marx, and was due to
the insistence of the followers of Ferdinand Lassalle. To say that Marx
held labor to be the sole source of wealth is to misrepresent his whole
teaching.[159]

But while the Lassallians, and before them the Ricardians, used the
_phrase_, it is evident that they assumed the inclusion of what Marx
calls "Nature." They know very well that labor, mere exertion of
physical strength, could produce nothing. If, for instance, a man were
to spend all his strength trying to lift the pyramids, alone and unaided
by mechanical power, it is quite evident to the meanest intellect that
his exertions would not produce a single atom of wealth. It is equally
obvious that if we take any use-value, whether it be an exchange-value
or not being immaterial, we cannot eliminate from it the substance of
which it is composed. Take, for example, the canoe of a savage, which is
a simple use-value, and a meerschaum pipe, which is a commodity. In the
canoe we have part of the trunk of a tree taken from the primeval
forest, one of Nature's products. But without the labor of the savage it
would never have become a canoe. It would have remained simply part of
the trunk of a tree, and would not have acquired the use-value it has as
a canoe. But it is likewise true that without the tree the canoe could
not have existed. So with our meerschaum pipe. It is not simply a
use-value: it is also an article of commerce, an exchange-value, a
commodity. Its elements are, the silicate mineral which Nature provided
and the form which human labor has given it. We can apply this test to
every form of wealth, whether simple use-values or commodities, and we
shall find that, in Mill's phrase, wealth is produced by the application
of human labor to _appropriate natural objects_.

This brings us to the second point in Mr. Mallock's criticism, namely,
that Marx held that only "ordinary manual labor" is capable of producing
wealth, and that, therefore, all wealth ought to go to the manual
laborers. One looks in vain for a single passage in all the writings of
Marx which will justify this criticism. It may be conceded at once that
if Marx taught anything of the kind, the defect in Marxian theory is
fatal. But it must be proven that the defect exists--and the _onus
probandi_ rests upon Mr. Mallock. One need not be a trained economist or
a learned philosopher to see how absurd such a theory must be. Suppose