The office is from the outset always infinitesimally small compared to the
 industrial workshop. As for the rest, it is clear that as the scale of
 production is extended, commercial operations required constantly for the
 circulation of industrial capital, in order to sell the product existing as
 commodity-capital, to reconvert the money so received into means of production,
 and to keep account of the whole process, multiply accordingly. Calculation of
 prices, book-keeping, managing funds, correspondence — all belong under
 this head. The more developed the scale of production, the greater, even if not
 proportionately greater, the commercial operations of the industrial capital,
 and consequently the labour and other costs of circulation involved in
 realising value and surplus-value. This necessitates the employment of
 commercial wage-workers who make up the actual office staff. The outlay for
 these, although made in the form of wages, differs from the variable capital
 laid out in purchasing productive labour. It increases the outlay of the
 industrial capitalist, the mass of the capital to be advanced, without directly
 increasing surplus-value. Because it is an outlay for labour employed solely in
 realising value already created. Like every other outlay of this kind, it
 reduces the rate of profit be-cause the advanced capital increases, but not the
 surplus-value. If surplus-value s remains constant while advanced capital C
 increases to C + DC, then the rate of profit s/C is
 replaced by the smaller rate of profit s/C + DC. The
 industrial capitalist endeavours, therefore, to cut these expenses of
 circulation down to a minimum, just as his expenses for constant capital.
 Hence, industrial capital does not maintain the same attitude to its commercial
 wage-labourers as it does to its productive wage-labourers. The more productive
 wage-labourers it employs under otherwise equal circumstances, the greater the
 output, and the greater the surplus-value, or profit. Conversely, however, the
 larger the scale of production, the greater the quantity of value and
 surplus-value to be realised, the greater the produced commodity-capital, the
 greater are the absolute, if not relative, office costs, giving rise to a kind
 of division of labour. To what extent profit is the precondition for these
 outlays, is seen, among other things, from the fact that with the increase of
 commercial salaries, a part of them is frequently paid by a share in the
 profit. It is in the nature of things that labour consisting merely of
 intermediate operations connected partly with calculating values, partly with
 realising them, and partly with reconverting the realised money into means of
 production, is a labour whose magnitude therefore depends on the quantity of
 the produced values that have to he realised, and does not act as the cause,
 like directly productive labour, but rather as an effect, of the respective
 magnitudes and masses of these values. The same applies to the other costs of
 circulation. To do much measuring, weighing, packing, and transporting, much
 must be on hand. The amount of packing, transporting, etc., depends on the
 quantity of commodities which are the objects of this activity, not vice
 versa.