Profits are not made by differential cleverness, but by differential stupidity.

Money is neither a material to work upon nor a tool to work with.

But it is clear that the price of labour has no necessary connection with the price of food, since it depends entirely on the supply of labourers compared with the demand.

But a rise in the wages of labour would not equally affect commodities produced with machinery quickly consumed, and commodities produced with machinery slowly consumed.

The farmer and manufacturer can no more live without profit than the labourer without wages.

The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of producing the last portions of it.

LABOUR, like all other things which are purchased and sold, and which may be increased or diminished in quantity, has its natural and its market price. The natural price of labour is that price which is necessary to enable the labourers, on with another, to subsist and to perpetuate their race, without either increase or diminution.