SOCIAL SUSTENANCE. 231 



return help them by giving them the money we have got for helping 

 somebody else, and with it they buy the products or services of still 

 other people. 



The doctor helps the lawyer to get well. The lawyer helps the doc- 

 tor to get something to eat and wear, by giving him some of the money 

 he has got for helping other people to get their rights in the courts. 



The mutual help of man and wife is usually in this form. Only 

 in this case there is no stipulated return service for what the wife 

 does, and she gets part of her reward in money and part in goods. 

 She is to have her living this the law provides. If the case comes 

 into court, the amplitude of her living may be fixed, or rather the 

 amplitude of her means of living. Otherwise, she may render a large 

 service for a poor living, or get a good living for no service at all. 

 But whatever service she does render is rendered directly, and it also, 

 like the finished product in the fourth combination, enters immedi- 

 ately into the living of the other party to the mutual helpfulness. 



6. There is a sixth combination of human effort, and a very impor- 

 tant one. It is the combination of past with successive present efforts. 

 In one form of it the material product of the past effort is called capi- 

 tal. In other forms it is non-material, and is called skill, education, 

 training, reputation, prestige, or good- will. If a fisherman spends a 

 week making a boat, we say he has spent a week accumulating capital. 

 But if he spends five days learning how, and makes the boat in a day, 

 we say he has spent a day in the production of capital. If he spends 

 another week in learning to row it, he has still spent but one day in 

 the accumulation of capital. But, none the less, he has done two 

 weeks' work which will never bear fruit until it is combined with fu- 

 ture work, and then it will (presumably) fertilize that future work and 

 increase its fruitage. 



So the past work of the dead father is combined with the present 

 work of the living son. This, not only as embodied in the estate which 

 he left him, but as manifested in his education, moral, mental, and 

 manual. This combination links us to the whole past and the whole 

 future. It needs to be very carefully studied. 



For instance, the hasty critic may say that it is identical with the 

 third combination, since in that the past labor of the cotton-planter is 

 combined with the present labor of the weaver. But this criticism 

 misses the point. In the third combination we combine the past efforts 

 of others with our own present efforts in a single combination, resulting 

 in a single product or service. In the sixth combination we combine 

 identical past efforts, which may be our own, with a stiecession of our 

 own present efforts, to produce a succession of similar or different 

 products or services. Any individual fiber of cotton, once woven into 

 cloth, and worn, is extinct ; but the boat of the fisherman may be 

 used over and over again for fishing, for hunting, for necessary jour- 

 neys, or for pleasure. 



