The period through which we are now passing--that of
machinery--is distinguished by a special characteristic,--WAGES.
Wages issued in a direct line from the employment of
machinery,--that is, to give my thought the entire generality of
expression which it calls for, from the economic fiction by which
capital becomes an agent of production. Wages, in short, coming
after the division of labor and exchange, is the necessary
correlative of the theory of the reduction of costs, in whatever
way this reduction may be accomplished. This genealogy is too
interesting to be passed by without a few words of explanation.
The first, the simplest, the most powerful of machines is the
WORKSHOP.
Division simply separates the various parts of labor, leaving
each to devote himself to the specialty best suited to his
tastes: the workshop groups the laborers according to the
relation of each part to the whole. It is the most elementary
form of the balance of values, undiscoverable though the
economists suppose this to be.
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