If I were to come before your Board of Trade with a statement that there had been discovered within easy access of Philadelphia a bed of iron ore, of vast extent, and of' a quality thr superior to any known deposit, if I could support this statement by the testimony of eminent mining engineers, it" I should submit to you samples of iron and steel manulhctured from this ore, and shouht produce winchers from experts as to their superior excellence; and if I should filrther announce that the Baldwin Locomotive Works aud the Phoenix Iron Works were ready to accept the product of" this ore for their supplies, --I think there is very little doubt but that sufficient capital could be /bund here in Philadelphia to develop the enterprise. In accepting your invitation to speak before your Board of Trade this evening, I desire to present a sul)jcet of far greater importance to the material interests of this eity and State than all the mineral wealth of the district; and if ] cannot .justit)" liberal expenditures in promoting it on grounds as substantial, tangible and practical as can be urged for investment in any of the mining enterprises (d' the State, I shall have entirely thiled in my argmnent.
Beibre entering into the details of the discussion I wish to say a word or two in explanation" of the term value, a term which I shall have frequent ()ceaslon to use. In a commercial sense, value means the price or worth of the thing bought or sold; in economic science-settlng aside for the time heing any discussio,l of the efii~ct of supply and demand upon value--the value of an article may be said to depend upon the original value of the raw material and the value of the labor which has heen expended upon it. And, further, the original ~:alue of the raw nmterial is usually so slight that we may say, speaking broadly, that any particular value set upon an article, such as $1 or $10, means that an equivalent amount of hunmn labor has been, as it were, detached from the indi-