PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 459 



Although man's labour — time, physical energy, forethought, 

 and mental and physical skill, are generally accepted by all recog- 

 nised economic authorities, as the chief factors in the creation of 

 consumable wealth, it must appear somewhat anomalous, and even 

 illogical, that such authorities, with a few notable exceptions, 

 should (except man as a slave) exclude man — the chief factor in 

 the creation of and appropriation of all economic wealth — from 

 forming any element of the value of capital as generally defined 

 by them. This seems all the more incomprehensible when we find, 

 notwithstanding the enormous increase of labour-saving fixed auxi- 

 liary instruments of production during the last fifty years (them- 

 selves, also, the direct product of the anterior-labour of man), that 

 such fixed auxiliary instruments represent not more than about 19 

 per cent, of the total capital value of consumable wealth, now 

 annually produced by the combined creative forces of labour and 

 the auxiliary instrumental aids, and by the captured and trained 

 natural forces. 



Similar confusion also arises from the stand-point taken by a 

 large number of economists in regarding the income or earnings, 

 by the mode of " salary or wages," as holding quite a different 

 relationship to true economic capital to that held by other modes 

 of deriving an income (such as income of the individual, derived in 

 the form of interest, dividend, rent; business-profit, &c.) ; where- 

 as, from an actuarial, or practical point of view, the true relation- 

 ship to capital of all such modes of deriving an income is in every 

 respect the same. 



Capital and Wages Difficulty. 

 In a paper entitled " Root Matters in Social and Economic Pro- 

 blems," read before the members of the Royal Society of Tasmania 

 in the year 1889, I dealt very fully with the difficulties caused by 

 varied and conflicting definitions of the terms capital and wages. 

 In that paper I stated the opinion that " The expansion or limita- 

 tion of the meaning of the terms, capital and wages, would not be 

 the source of so much confusion if it were more firmly grasped, by 

 each one, that these terms properly belong to two important and 

 distinct categories; the first either wholly or partly related to the 

 economic agents and forces employed in the creation or produc- 

 tion of human wants in exchange; the second either wholly or 

 partly to the reward " titles " (wages, interest, rent, profit, &c.), 

 commanding their respective shares in the actual appropriation of 

 the economic wants of exchange so produced. Instead, therefore, 

 of dwelling upon the contradictions involved by the inconsistent use 

 of these terms, it may serve a good purpose if we discuss ideas 

 rather than terms, and so avoid a fruitless logomachy regarding 

 unstable definitions. First, let us bring. under each category all 

 the elements that are necessary to be reckoned with in making them 

 complete. 



