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POLITICAL ECONOMY 
account. Evidently a producer’s surplus is 
normally yielded by every kind of work. 
What is the good of the conception ? It 
furnishes us with a clear-cut notion of an 
important part of the national income of 
utility which we should otherwise be in danger 
of overlooking, and moreover provides us with 
a theoretical (which may become a practical) 
means of measuring it. It is imperative that 
in directing progress the influence of different 
courses of action on the real, though intangible, 
income represented by producer’s surplus 
should not be lost sight of, as it is only too 
apt to be. 
In this discussion we have come in touch 
with the problem of the hours of labour, as 
regards which it must now suffice to say that, 
in the settlement of the duration of the normal 
day’s work, wages, the marginal dissatisfaction 
of working, the effect of different hours of 
labour on productivity and on the producer’s 
surplus of the operative, and the utility of 
capital in relation to the proportion of time 
that it is idle, all play a part; but not all 
of them such a part as they ought to play. 
Having noted so much, we may pass on to the 
equally practical and urgent question of the 
bearing of an extensive use of capital on