Note 1202 — Chapter II · : THE THEORY OF RENT AND ITS APPLICATIONS

“Labour and capital are but different forms of the same thing—human exertion. Capital is produced by labour; it is, in fact, but labour impressed upon matter.… The use of capital in production is, therefore, but a mode of labour.… Hence the principle that, under circumstances which permit free competition, operates to bring wages to a common standard and profits to a substantial equality—the principle that men will seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion—operates to establish and maintain this equilibrium between wages and interest.… And this relation fixed, it is evident that interest and wages must rise and fall together, and that interest cannot be increased without increasing wages, nor wages be lowered without depressing interest.” (Progress and Poverty, Book III, chap. 5.) It is hardly necessary to point out how very much simplified this doctrine concerning the relation between wages and interest really is.