726 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



work, but it appropriates the subsistence necessary from present and 

 future production, taking it in the form of taxation. No part of the 

 world really lives on past production — that is, out of the savings of 

 past labor. The whole world really lives from hand to mouth. Let 

 the entire production of any great city be stopped for a day, and it 

 would become evident how entirely men are dependent upon present 

 production. The worker, therefore, on any prolonged enterprise does 

 not draw his subsistence from past labor. He simply draws from the 

 present amount of wealth a certain part in one form after he has 

 added to present wealth a certain amount in another form. "The 

 series of exchanges which unite production and consumption may be 

 likened," says Mr. George, " to a curved pipe filled with water. If a 

 quantity of water is poured in at one end, a like quantity is released 

 at the other. It is not identically the same water, but is its equiva- 

 lent. And so they who do the work of production put in as they take 

 out — they receive in subsistence and wages but the produce of their 

 labor." 



Capital, then, neither pays the wages of labor nor subsists laborers 

 in production, yet it has a function in production. This function is, 

 holds Mr. George, to assist labor by providing it with better tools ; by 

 enabling labor to avail itself of the reproductive force of nature, as 

 to get corn by sowing it, etc. ; by allowing the greater division of 

 labor, and thus vastly increasing its efiiciency ; and by holding and dis- 

 tributing the results of labor through exchange. To make exchange 

 perfect there must constantly be great stores of goods in warehouses, 

 ships, and railroad trains — goods held to supply the market, and goods 

 on their way to market. To make labor effective, there must be many 

 and various tools, factories, engines — all sorts of machinery. These 

 tools and these goods in the hands of the producer are capital. Capi- 

 tal may limit the form and productiveness of industry by not supply- 

 ing these tools or not rendering it this service in exchange, but to do 

 this is a vastly different thing from limiting the exertion of labor, 

 which is what the current doctrine teaches. 



The wage-fund theory of the relations of capital and labor thus 

 proves upon analysis to be untenable. The theory is and has always 

 been weak. It has gained its ascendancy and almost universal accept- 

 ance, not from its own strength, Mr. George thinks, but from other 

 considerations. Behind this theory stands another theory, that offers 

 an explanation of continued poverty, and that fits into the other so as 

 to lend it support in all directions. This theory is the Malthusian 

 doctrine of population. This doctrine is, that population tends to in- 

 crease faster than the means of obtaining food. Population presses 

 with greater and greater force against the limit of subsistence. The 

 limit is not a fixed but an elastic one, and the pressure exhibits itself 

 in an increasing difficulty in procuring a living, and in that degree of 

 want that will always keep population within the bounds of subsist- 



