CHAPTER 30. COST OF PRODUCTION

1. What is the cost of a good you have made entirely with your own labor?

2. What is the difference to the employer between rent, interest, and wages as items of cost?

3. Is there anything in common between "cost, the onerous exertion necessary to get goods," and cost as the money expenses of production?

4. Why does a merchant engage in one business rather than in another?

5. When prices fall, what determines which factories shall close, and which workmen shall be discharged?

6. Does the value of a product conform to the capital that has been put into it.

NOTE.--For a fuller treatment of the more recent view of the subject, see Smart, pp. 64-83; Wieser, _Natural Value_, pp. 171-214; Böhm-Bawerk, _Positive Theory of Capital_, pp. 179-189, 223-234. The defects of such revisions as that attempted by Alfred Marshall are pointed out in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, Vol. XV, pp. 432-452, article "The Passing of the Old Rent Concept."