e economists, observing that, when a thing like gold is very
valuable, men spend a great deal of labour in getting it, have said that
#the labour spent upon it is the cause of the high value#. #This is
quite wrong#; for if it were true, anything, upon which great labour has
been spent, ought to be very valuable; everybody knows that such is not
the case. Great labour may be expended in writing, printing, and binding
a book; but, if nobody wants the book, it is valueless, except as waste
paper. A vast amount of labour was spent on building the Thames Tunnel,
but, as few people wished to go through it, the tunnel was of small
value, until it was required for a railway. Thus it is quite certain
that we cannot make a thing valuable by simply labouring at it; we must
labour in such a way as to make the thing useful.

On the other hand, substances may be very valuable which have cost
little or no labour. When a shepherd in Australia happens to pick up a
nugget of gold on the mountain side, it takes no labour worth mentioning
to pick it up, yet the gold is just as valuable in proportion to its
weight as any other gold. Some gold mines produce a great quantity of
gold: others which have cost quite as much to sink, produce little;
nevertheless the gold out of the one mine is sold at the same price in
proportion to its weight and fineness as that out of the other mine.
#Thus it is quite certain that labour is not the cause of value.# Gold
is valuable because a great many people want more gold than they have
already got, and whenever a thing is valuable it is because somebody
wants it.

But we may look at this matter in another way. If it were possible to
get a valuable thing like gold with little labour, many people would
become gold miners. Much gold would then be produced; if this were
wanted as much as what was already in use, it would be as valuable. But
no one wants an unlimited quantity of any substance. Wealth, as we saw,
must be limited in supply; if gold became as plentiful as lead or iron,
it could not possibly remain as valuable as it is now. People would have
far more than they could employ for ornaments, watches, gilding and so
forth; there would be a large surplus to be used in making pots and
pans, for which it is less needed. Now we can see through the whole
subject of value. When much of a substance can usually be produced with
little labour, the substance becomes so plentiful that people are
satisfied with the