Theory of Labour

Abstract

Adam Smith said, “The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. … Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money, that was paid for all things.”¹ If subjected to a very searching analysis, this celebrated passage might not prove to be so entirely true as it would at first sight seem to most readers to be. Yet it is substantially true, and luminously expresses the fact that labour is the beginning of the processes treated by economists, as consumption is the end and purpose. Labour is the painful exertion which we undergo to ward off pains of greater amount, or to procure pleasures which leave a balance in our favour. Courcelle-Seneuil ² and Hearn have stated the problem of Economics with the utmost