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== Introducing the Theme of Capitalism ==

The Oso is essentially a flop house with cheap cots laid closely together. This is where Dobbsie and Curt encounter Howard (Walter Huston), the older but spry prospector. As the two ex-patriots drop onto their cots, Howard is regaling a captive audience with tales of his illustrious days as a prospector and miner. At the time, gold was worth twenty dollars per ounce. A member of Howard’s audience wonders if gold is so valuable due to the fact that it is a rare find. Howard corrects his young friend, telling him that gold is all around, just waiting to be found. The true reason that gold is so valuable he explains is, “An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the finding and the getting of it.” “Human labor,” the key to Howard’s logic, is apropos to the Marxist theory of labor power. In “Wage Labor and Capital,” Marx claims that the “capitalist buys this labor power,” and uses this human labor to further his profit.<ref>Karl Marx, “Wage Labor and Capital,” in ''Literary Theory: An Anthology,'' 2nd ed., ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 657.</ref>Conversely, the worker sells his labor simply to survive. This is the message Howard delivers to a group of men who are all of the labor class. Howard’s audience consists of a group of men, primarily Americans, who are living hand to mouth and sleeping on filthy cots in a Mexican flop house. This ilk is the very antithesis of the bourgeois class.

Marx claims that “Capital…is a bourgeois production relation.”<ref>Marx, "Wage Labor," 662.</ref>Proletariat and bourgeois classes are separated not only by money but also by class. The proletariat class labors while the bourgeois class profits from proletariat labor. Marx insists that without workers there can be no capital, thus laborers must comprehend their collective value. In ''Treasure,''Howard recognizes this as experience has taught him, “As long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last. But, when the piles of gold begin to grow, that’s when the trouble starts.” Howard holds that wealth leads to greed. The importance of Howard making this statement is that he has experienced wealth by striking gold in the past. He is telling his audience, both in the Oso and in the movie theater, that obtaining riches from extraction leads to a man’s demise; either material or psychological. Marx spoke of extracting labor from humans while in ''Treasure'' the extraction was symbolized by the mountain that held the gold.