Page:Shop Talks on Economics.djvu/12

 valuable in the end than the kitchen chair made in the big factories where many men working at large machines produce hundreds of chairs in a single day.

Of course we know that every new improvement in machinery lessens the labor-time needed in making certain commodities. Oil is less valuable than it was ten years ago because it takes less labor-power to produce it. Steel has fallen in value, because owing to the new and improved machinery used in making steel it requires less human labor power for its production.

Suppose every shoe factory in the country were working full time in order to supply the demand for shoes. The factories using the very old fashioned machinery would require more labor to the shoe than the factories using newer machines, while the great, up-to-date factories using the most modern machines would need comparatively little human labor-power in producing shoes.

The value of shoes would be determined by the average (or social) labor-time necessary to make them, or the socially necessary labor contained in all the shoes.

The value of gold or silver is determined in the same way. The necessary social labor needed to produce gold gives it its value. The value of gold rises or falls just as the value of other commodities rise or fall. Today gold is much lower in value than it was twenty years ago, because new methods of production have reduced the social labor needed in gold mining