Note 176 — Chapter X · CAIRNES

P. 88. It is a waste of terms to call the duration and quantity of labor the same thing, and consequently to consider the quantity of labor cost and quantity of labor different things. Smith and Ricardo merely touched on this matter, but the former says in a passage incorporated also by the latter in his text: “There may be more labour in an hour’s hard work than in two hours early business;” or quantity of labor is the product of duration multiplied by disutility per unit of time; and this is the preferable usage.