A convenient intermediate commodity intervenes to facilitate this exchange of services, and even to serve as a measure of their relative importance—Money. But this makes no substantial difference,—the principle remains exactly the same, just as in mechanics the transmission of forces is subject to the same law, whether there be one or several intermediate wheels.
This is so true that, when the loaf is worth fourpence, for example, if a good bookkeeper wishes to analyze its value, he will succeed in discovering, amid the multiplicity of transactions which go to the accomplishment of the final result, all those whose services have contributed to form that value,—all those who have saved labour to the man who finally pays for it as the consumer. He discovers, first of all, the baker, who retains his five per cent., [p143] and from that percentage remunerates the mason who has built his oven, the wood-cutter who prepares his billets, etc. Then comes the miller, who receives not only the recompense of his own labour, but the means of remunerating the quarryman who has furnished his millstones, the labourer who has formed his dam, etc. Other portions of the total value go to the thresher, the reaper, the labourer, the sower, until you account for the last farthing. No part of it assuredly goes to remunerate God and nature. The very idea is absurd, and yet this is rigorously implied in the theory of the Economists, who attribute a certain portion of the value of a product to matter or natural forces. No; we still find that what ‹has value› is not the Loaf, but the series of ‹services› which have put me in possession of it.
It is true that, among the elementary parts of the value of the loaf, our book-keeper will find one which he will have difficulty in connecting with a ‹service›, at least a service implying effort. He will find of the fourpence, of which the price is made up, a part goes to the proprietor of the soil, to the man who has the keeping of the laboratory. That small portion of the value of the loaf constitutes what is called the ‹rent of land›; and, misled by the form of expression, by the metonymy which again makes its appearance here, our calculator may be tempted to think that this portion is allotted to natural agents—to the soil itself.