xpenditure of labor,
would do more good; nor must he add to the stock of either of these
after he has acquired such a supply of them that the first unit of
implement No. 3 would be of greater importance. Measuring the
efficiency of producers' goods is necessary in the case of every one
who creates wealth at all, and such measurements reveal the fact that
the more producers' goods of one kind a man has, the less is the
productive power that resides in one of them.[5]

[5] The law of diminishing returns of successive units of
_capital goods_ is based on the same principle as the law of
diminishing returns of _capital_, but it is not identical
with it. We shall see, in due time, how a permanent fund of
producers' wealth actually grows and why each new unit, as it
adds itself to the fund, creates a smaller income than did
its predecessor.

_The Foregoing Truths Universal._--All the general facts which have
been thus far stated hold true wherever wealth is produced. They do
not presuppose the facts of a division of labor and a system of
exchanges, and they do not even require that there should be any
social organization. Men in the most primitive tribes and even men
living in Crusoe-like isolation would create wealth by labor aided by
capital. The essence of that wealth would be effective utility, and
the measure of this, which is value, would be made in the specific way
that we have described. The varieties of capital, the distinction
between capital and capital goods, and the law of diminishing
productivity of such goods would appear in the most primitive
economics as well as in the most advanced. These are by no means all
of the facts and principles which are thus of universal application.
They are merely a few of the more important and may serve as a
foundation or a "Grundlegung," for further study. If we should extend
our list of general and basic truths, it would quickly appear that the
incomes that have been treated as rent and the various surplus gains
which are analogous to rent are universal economic phenomena which it
would be not illogical to discuss in the preliminary part of this
treatise. What has been stated, however, concerning the laws of
diminishing productivity of successive units of producers' wealth,
concerning the diminishing utility of successive units of consumers'
wealth, and also concerning the increasing burdensomeness of
continuous hours of labor, presents the essen