CAPITAL AND ABSTINENCE. 535 



any rate is the worker's view of the situation, and it id well 

 to recognise it and not pretend that they are quaiTelling with 

 the requisites of production. 



Food (in the mass, ]:»efore it reaches the labourer) and tools 

 are nothing- to theii- possessor unless he can " realise " them 

 (turn them into money) ; but money can command both food 

 and tools. The capitalist has not the food which the labourer 

 requii'es, but he holds the key of the granary, and no one can 

 get a morsel, not even the man who grew the grain, unless he 

 turns the key. He contributes nothing to enterprise ; neither 

 the labour that is the active factor in production, nor the food 

 the men work on, nor the tools they work with, but he controls 

 the whole course of industiy, and holds a perpetual lien on the 

 proceeds, and the more he " saves " out of his income the 

 harder it becomes to find employment, and the heavier grows 

 the burden of the toll which industry must pay. 



Well, I am not going into the ethics of the question. But 

 I wish (1st) to remind those who take upon themselves to 

 lecture and scold the la))ourer for quarrelling with capital, and 

 who insist that it is his friend and ally, that words are but the 

 arbitrary signs of ideas and have no natural and inherent 

 meaning. Their meaning is determined solely by custom, the 

 custom of those Avho habitually use them. Further, that 

 " capital " is essentially and emphatically a business term, in 

 full popular use before economists were dreamt of, and by them 

 borrowed from business men ; and that if they want to be 

 listened to they will enquire what the business man understands 

 by the term, and frankly accept his meaning instead of 

 quarrelling with him for not meaning something else. And 

 (•2nd) to show that the " saving " which the economist values so 

 highly and inculcates so assiduously is mainly imaginary so far 

 as real utilities are concerned ; that it rather checks than pro- 

 motes accumulations ; that the " capital " arising out of it 

 drains industry instead of assisting it ; and lastly (though I 

 have no space to go into this) that the tendency of its accumu- 

 lating tribute is to outrun legitimate earnings and so produce 

 periodical crises. 



What, then, is the moral of our discourse ? Are we to take 

 no thought for the morrow ? make no provision for the future ? 

 Certainly we ought ; and the ways of doing so are chiefly 

 three — 



1 . By avoiding waste. This is saving in the strictest sense 

 and in its most legitimate form, but it is quite a different thing 

 from the self-denying abstinence of the economist. The thrifty 



