CHAPTER V
 

                 THEORY OF LABOUR



               Definition of Labour.

Adam Smith said, " The real price of everything, what

everything  really  costs  to the  man who wants  to

acquire it, is the toil and trouble  of acquiring it.  . . .

Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money,

that was paid for all things."1   If subjected to  a very

searching analysis, this celebrated passage  might not

prove to be  so entirely true as it  would at first sight

seem to most readers  to  be.   Yet it is substantially

true, and luminously expresses the fact that labour is

the beginning of the  processes treated by economists,

as consumption is  the end and purpose.  Labour is

the  painful  exertion which we undergo to ward off

pains of greater amount, or to procure pleasures which

leave a balance  in  our  favour.   Courcelle-Seneuil2

and  Hearn have stated the problem of Economics with



   1  Wealth of Nations, book i., chap. v.

   2  Traite Theorique et  Pratique dEconomic Politique, 2d ed., vol i.

p. 33.