[Letter] Jan.28,1889,Smith College [to F.H. Giddings]

Jan. 28, 1889, Smith College.

Dear Friend,
       Jahrbücher rec'd.
Extract from notice sent
to Ginn & Co.
Don't fight, -
but if you must fight,
win. That is good Quaker
advice.
Don't reply to this
letter till you get your
exam papers off your hands, and
then till you feel
like it. I ought not to make
you write one unnecessary line.
What, however, is a poor
fellow to do? You would
go to Bryn Mawr where
I can't get at you.
 I want, some time
before very long, your
judgment on this
corollary of my Wage Theory.
窶弋he same reasoning that
proves that rent is not an
element in price may
be made to prove that
wages are not an element
in price.窶�
Traditional proof: demand
requires resort to poorest land.
Cost of increment then produced
= wages + int. on very little capital
- no rent. Remit rent, and
farmers can and will continue to
get present prices.
 For land say all
concrete instruments. Mode of
paying rent on them is by
borrowing money and buying them.
Rent on them takes form of
interest. This true of mill site
as well as of mill. Also true
of farm as well as of stock.
Where farms are mortgaged to
full value rent appears in literal
form of interest. Two current
statements "rent is not an element in
price" and "interest is an
element" are not both true.
Rent is an element. Farther
referring to wage theory and
its analysis of final increments
of product created by capital:
demand compels resort to
last increment of pure capital.
This virtually is unaided by
labor. Product of last $1000
added to social cap., labor
supply remaining same, is what
this sum adds to previous product.
Demand calls for that increment.
It is produced by capital "working
under the greatest disadvantage." If
workmen would forego wages, and other
elements of the problem remained
to same, entrepreneurs having to
produce given quantity of product, must
resort to this last increment of
capital, and must get a price that will
justify use of it. They must get what they
now do. Wages are not an element in
price. Reductio ad absurdum.

      Yours Very Truly,
           J. B. Clark

P.S. The conclusion is that cost of any palt of
supply is in reality the same.