te efficiency, and wages, in the particular
occupation concerned, rise. But this is but a temporary fluctuation, and
nothing can permanently alter _general_ wages except an increase or
diminution of capital itself compared with the quantity of labour
offering itself to be hired.

Again, high prices can only raise wages if the producers and dealers,
receiving more, are induced to add to their capital or, at least, to
their purchases of labour. But high prices of this sort, if they benefit
one class of labourers, can only do so at the expense of others, since
all other people, by paying those high prices, have their purchasing
power reduced by an equal degree.

Another common opinion, which is only partially true, is that wages vary
with the price of food, rising when it rises and falling when it falls.
In times of scarcity, people generally compete more violently for
employment, and lower the labour market against themselves. But dearness
or cheapness of food, when of a permanent character, may affect wages.
If food grows permanently dearer without a rise of wages, a greater
number of children will prematurely die, and thus wages will ultimately
be higher; but only because the number of people will be smaller than if
food had remained cheap. Certain rare circumstances excepted, high wages
imply restraints on population.

As the wages of the labourer are the remuneration of labour, so the
profits of the capitalist are properly the remuneration of abstinence.
They are what he gains by forbearing to consume his capital for his own
uses and allowing it to be consumed by productive labourers for their
uses. Of these gains, however, a part only is properly an equivalent for
the use of the capital itself; namely, so much as a solvent person would
be willing to pay for the loan of it. This, as everybody knows, is
called interest. What a person expects to gain who superintends the
employment of his own capital is always more than this. The rate of
profit greatly exceeds the rate of interest. The surplus is partly
compensation for risk and partly remuneration for the devotion of his
time and labour. Thus, the three parts into which profit may be regarded
as resolving itself, may be described, respectively, as interest,
insurance, and wages of superintendence.

The requisites of production being labour, capital, and natural agents,
the only person besides the labourer and the capitalist whose consent is
necessary to production