ABSTRACT
§ 1. Family maintenance is the basis of a wage system. Individual wages are adjusted to the wages obtainable by other members of the family. — § 2. Grade wages vary with the physical and moral conditions of the work: many factors, personal, adventitious, social, determine the price per unit of the different sorts of labour-power. —§ 3. The tendency of wages towards a minimum is normally true. The seller is usually weaker than the buyer in the bargain. —§ 4. Non-competitive conditions qualify this tendency. A scarcity or surplus wage sometimes is obtained. — § 5. Combinations secure similar surplus interest for capital. —§ 6. Rent of land, though not a ‘cost,’ is an ‘expense of production,’ measured in terms of the price of units of land-power. There are many supplies of land for different uses: the worst or ‘marginal’ land for each use pays least rent, because it yields the smallest number of units. —§ 7. Margins are directly ‘determined by,’ do not directly ‘determine,’ prices of land-use. All three factors have their margins, which similarly rise and fall with rise or fall of prices. Price changes, however, may affect supply, not at the extensive margin, but at some higher point, or at the intensive margin. —§ 8. Differential rents, then, play no real part in formulating a theory of distribution. —§ 9. Defects of the method of imputing separate productivity to units in an organic co-operation. —§ 10. Unproductive surplus, entering into prices, is a ‘necessary’ payment only so long as ‘monopoiy’ or ‘scarcity’ is maintained.
