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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



would bear one out in saying that capital in. 

 vested in a business is not wealth unless it can 

 be realized into a form which gives security for 

 the satisfaction of wants. If we only talk about 

 commodities we ignore the different functions 

 which commodities are made to serve in accord- 

 ance with human activity: our science, by at- 

 tending merely to the embodiment, has neglected 

 distinctions among the powers embodied ; and it 

 is with these activities that we propose to deal. 



Energy. — There is little difficulty in perceiv- 

 ing the influence which drives human beings to 

 work : want is the occasion of all human energy, 

 just as it forces the birds of the air and beasts 

 of the field to spend weary hours in the pursuit 

 of prey. The wants of the savage are scarcely 

 greater than those of the animal — only a little 

 food and a little shelter — yet the privation he 

 endures and the drudgery he undergoes in his 

 spasmodic and frequently-relaxed efforts to obtain 

 the necessaries of life are immeasurably greater 

 than those which are required to satisfy the wants 

 of the civilized man in constant employment. 

 The life of a North American Indian is not an easy 

 one : it is one of wasted and misapplied exertion, 

 and the greatest change in the civilization of a 

 tribe must occur when they learn wisdom enough 

 to devote themselves to regular work, and develop 

 the mental quality we term energy. 



Patience. — The capacity for regular work not 

 only implies a growth of wisdom, but a develop- 

 ment of other qualities as well. From no form of 

 tillage, or other employment, can we obtain im- 

 mediate results : in all of them we need patience 

 to wait, willingness to work now, for the gain of 

 a distant day. It is partly because they have no 

 capacity for waiting that the American Indians 

 prefer a life of hunting and semi-starvation. 



We may see, then, that before human beings 

 can engage in any regular work at all, two things 

 are absolutely necessary — the energy to engage in 

 industry and a capacity for patient waiting. When 

 either of these is wanting, there may be preda- 

 tory or nomadic existence, but never any advance 

 in the arts and comforts of life. Not less true is 

 it that, within all the various branches of our 

 giant industry, these two factors are found : La- 

 bor in its countless forms is but the agent of in- 

 telligent industry ; Capital is the representative of 

 Patience, which is willing to wait for the results 

 of work. 



(e.) Appropriation. — To these two factors in 

 the satifaction of want we may add a third: the 

 recognition of the right of private property has 

 been one of the most potent economical influences 



the world has ever seen. With the ground of that 

 right, and the precise nature of that right, we 

 have nothing to do : it may suffice to say that 

 there was a time in most, if not all, settled Ary- 

 an villages, when communism and custom ruled 

 the day, and that, so far as we see, no great ex- 

 pansion of industry was possible till this system 

 yielded to that of private property. The recog- 

 nition of this right affects both the factors we 

 have already considered, for neither Energy nor 

 Patience can fail to be stimulated by the expec- 

 tation of appropriating the reward. Of course, 

 Appropriation is implied in the satisfying of 

 any wants ; but it is only when society has devel- 

 oped to some extent that the influence of the " de- 

 sire of having" can be distinguished from that of 

 physical needs and greeds. When we have thus 

 added Appropriation as a stimulus to greater 

 Energy and greater Patience, we seem to have 

 given a sufficiently complete account of all the 

 powers involved in the production of wealth. 



Our account of the matter has certainly dif- 

 fered from that of the popular text-books, which 

 insist on labor, capital, and land, as the requisites 

 of production. That analysis has a suspicious 

 appearance of being drawn from the three classes 

 of our community rather than from a scientific 

 consideration of the case. Besides, the classifi- 

 cation is very liable to be misunderstood. To the 

 socialist, it may well seem as if labor were the 

 only active factor in the production of wealth ; 

 capital and land being mere conditions of its ex- 

 ercise — just as noise accompanies the motion of a 

 carriage : he is told that capital is " the result of 

 labor ; " and it is therefore obvious that capital 

 could not have been needed for labor in the first 

 days of human life, and that it cannot be neces- 

 sary for the production of wealth. Still, further, 

 the classification is redundant : capital often takes 

 the form of land, and one cannot separate the two 

 factors in considering the production of a load of 

 hny. Laborers in all cases supply a portion of 

 the capital — their clothes, themselves ; and some 

 economists use this term to describe their acquired 

 skill. It is almost harder to carry out the dis- 

 tinctions clearly when we come to objects which 

 are used partly for pleasure and partly for gain — 

 say a horse with which a farmer hunts and which 

 he also uses on business-errands. Ilere it is ob- 

 vious that the "distinction between capital and 

 non-capital depends solely on the intentions of 

 the owner" (Mill). " Capital " is only a symbol of 

 human power, it is the physical embodiment of Pa- 

 tience : " Land " is a symbol for the appropriation 

 of natural gifts that is implied in all production. 



