It is labour indeed that puts the difference on everything.

This line comes from John Locke’s discussion of property and value in his Second Treatise of Government (1689; published 1690). In the chapter “Of Property,” Locke argues that although the earth and its resources are originally held in common, individuals can legitimately appropriate parts of nature by “mixing” their labor with them—cultivating land, gathering, improving, or manufacturing. In that context he emphasizes that labor is what chiefly creates value: the same natural materials become far more useful and valuable once human effort transforms them. The remark supports Locke’s broader political aim of grounding private property rights and economic inequality in a moral account of productive labor rather than mere seizure or privilege.

Locke’s claim is that labor is the decisive factor that differentiates raw nature from valuable goods. What matters is not simply the material itself (land, timber, grain) but the human work that improves, organizes, and makes it serviceable. The sentence encapsulates his labor theory of value in moral-political form: labor both creates value and supplies a justification for ownership, because the worker has added something of himself to what was previously common. The idea became influential in later economic and political thought, shaping debates about property, productivity, and the legitimacy of wealth—while also inviting criticism about whose labor counts and how appropriation affects others.