Every man is rich or poor according to the degree in which he can afford to enjoy the necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life. (46) But after the division of labor has once thoroughly taken place, it is but a very small part of these with which a man’s own labor can supply him, the far greater part of them be must derive from the labor of other people, and he must be rich or poor according to the quantity of that labor which he can command, or which he can afford to purchase. (47) The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it is equal to the quantity of labor which it enables him to purchase or command. Labor, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. (48) What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labor, as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. (49) They contain the value of a certain quantity of labor which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money that as paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and (50) its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely to the quantity of labor which it can enable them to purchase or command.Wealth, as Mr. Hobbes says, is power. But the person who either acquires, or succeeds to a great fortune, does not necessarily acquire or succeed to any political power, either civil or military. His fortune may, perhaps, afford him the means of acquiring both, but the mere possession of that fortune does not necessarily convey to him either. (50) its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely to the quantity of labor which it can enable them to purchase or command.