Note 173-10 — Chapter III

Von Thünen, Isolirte Staat., II, 1, 154, gives the following formula as the expression of ideal wages: √ap, in which a = the necessary requirement for maintenance of the workmen, and p = the aggregate product of his labor. von Thünen attached so much importance to this formula that he had it engraved on his tomb-stone. But even if it were possible to reduce capital-generating labor and wage-labor to a common denominator, it would not be possible nor equitable to maintain the same dividing measure when capital and labor contributed in very different amounts to the production of the common product. An artist, for instance, who could make costly vessels out of very cheap clay and with cheap fuel would get too little by von Thünen's law; a mechanic who used a very efficient and costly machine, too much. The fundamental defect in his theory, von Thünen himself seems to have obscurely felt. Compare the letter in his Lebensbeschreibung, 1868, 239 and Roscher, Geschichte der Nat. Oek., in Deutschland, 895 ff.