Reply #5: Certainly, Sir, Labor Adds Value To Whatever It Is Applied To [View All]

[The Magistrate]

Nor does the laborer ever receive in wages the whole value his or her labor adds.

There can be limits to this, of course. Labor that extracts ore from a mine, labor that processes it for smelting, and renders it into raw metal bloom, cannot add more value to the ore than the value of the metal it actually contains. Labor that shapes the metal into useful or ornamental forms can add value greater than that of the raw metal, unshaped yet refined.