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The following history of the labor theory of value begins with Adam Smith, not because it is supposed that Political Economy was born with the Wealth of Nations, but because no other work written affords so convenient a starting-point to the historian who has no desire to press his investigations into regions too remote from modern interests. After Adam Smith, the writers to be considered are Ricardo and Malthus, McCulloch, James Mill and Torrens, Senior, John Stuart Mill, and Cairnes. In the next great treatise after that of Cairnes, the Principles of Economics of Marshall, there is nothing left of the labor theory of value, except a note at the end of a chapter on the general theory of the equilibrium of supply and demand. This note, “On Ricardo’s Theory of Value,” endeavors to state the ultimate relations of cost, utility and value in such a manner that Ricardo’s explanation of value is made to appear as a statement true as far as it goes, which errs only in being incomplete, and which is completed, not refuted, by the utility theory. This view will be taken up in the last chapter of the present essay. But no separate chapter is devoted to Professor Marshall’s work, because, as a matter of fact, the Ricardian labor theory finds no place in the text of his Principles. From Smith to Cairnes, the list of writers given above was selected as well calculated to exhibit the general line of development of English political economy. No attempt has been made to discover writers outside of this list, although it is not denied that such writers may not at present receive due credit for their influence upon the development of economic theory. Making no attempt at what might be called a discursive or extensive study of the field, this history will be confined to an intensive study of the chief writers. If it be found that certain of the above list of writers contributed nothing but error to the theory of value — and such is the case with three of them — even such a conclusion is deemed to be of historical value.