OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

both reckoned in kind) at a rate harmonizing with therate of interest. Oddly enough Bohm-Bawerk does notmention this derivative from his table. Another form,more nearly what Bohm-Bawerk apparently was gropingfor, could have been presented had his table been ex-tended to include not merely one dose of 100 days laborbut many such doses and if “labor” and “product” werereduced to a common denominator. Then the product ofthe marginal labor would be the return while the laboritself would be the cost from which return over cost couldbe derived. But the comparisons which Bohm-Bawerk actually employed are beside the point.

§7. Interest as a Cost

From the foregoing criticisms and discussion it will, Ihope, be seen that I have given full recognition, in thisbook, to the elements of productivity, technique of pro-duction, and cost, and that my chief objections to theirtreatment by many other writers is either that their treat-ment is inadequate and leaves the problem of interestindeterminate, or simply that they do not reduce theproblem to its simplest terms.

In particular, it has been noted that the ultimateeconomic cost is labor and that all money payments andindustrial operations intervening between labor and satis-factions may, in the large view, be dropped out. I haveendeavored, in this and in other ways, to articulate thetheory of interest with sound accounting principles, evenwhen no great damage would be done to interest theory,as such, if unsound accounting were allowed to enter.

The most flagrant case of unsound accounting injectedinto this discussion is, in my opinion, when waiting isregarded as a cost.

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