Thirdly, if that valuable, whether money or other, in which wages are paid, varies in cost to the employer, then the cost of the labor paid for by that valuable, efficiency of the laborers, and nominal rate of pay remaining the same, will of course be varied thereby. We shall learn hereafter in the chapter under that title, that the value of "Money" is by no means invariable even in one country, just as we have already learned the variable nature of all other values; and, too, wages are not always paid in money, though they are commonly reckoned in the terms of money; and accordingly, the third and last variable in a cost of labor is the cost to the employer of that valuable, whatever it be, in which the wages are paid. Assuming, as we may, that given wages are paid in money, then any country that has for any reason a more abundant money than another may clearly pay higher rates of nominal wages than that other without making its costs of labor any higher than in that. The United States, for example, has usually had a very abundant money (not always of the best kind), which of course has tended to make higher the current prices of all commodities, and this has enabled capitalist-employers to pay higher nominal rates of wages, without at all enhancing relatively the costs of labor, and also without really benefiting the laborers.
(b) We will now analyze second the Cost of Capital in this connection, as the only other element of cost in the Cost of Production of Commodities in general, and particularly now in the cost of making worthless land-pieces valuable so as to be used in further production. Here too we find three variables, no one of which can be safely neglected any more than the other three in the reckoning that has for its object a prospective cost of production. These are, first, _the current rate per centum_; second, _the time for which the capital is advanced_; and third, _the liability of that form of capital to slow or rapid wearing out_. For instance, under the first variable, the rate per centum of capital, if the rate at Amsterdam be 3 and that at New York be 7, if the cost of labor be equal in the two cities, if the time of advance be one year, and if there be no liability of the capital to wear out; then any commodity made at Amsterdam with an outlay of $100 may be sold at a profit for $103, while a similar commodity made at New York with the same outlay cannot be sold for less than $107. All other things being equal, a _low rate per centum_ of capital in any country gives that country an advantage in the markets of the world for selling its commodities over other countries offering similar commodities where the rate is higher, because its cost of their production is less. Of course also such a country can subjugate its wild lands and make them valuable at less cost than the other countries.