CHAPTER XIX. 



COMPOUND CAPITAL. 



821. EARLY stages in the genesis of what is now called 

 joint-stock enterprise, are instructive as showing, in several 

 ways, how progress of each kind depends on several kinds 

 of preceding progress; and as also showing how any indus 

 trial structure, specialized into the form now familiar to us, 

 arose out of an indefinite germ in which it was mingled with 

 other structures. 



The creation of the accumulated fund we call capital, 

 depends on certain usages and conditions. Among peoples 

 who, besides burying with the dead man his valuables, some 

 times even killed his animals and cut down his fruit trees, 

 no considerable masses of property could be aggregated. 

 The growth of such masses was also prevented by constant 

 wars, which now absorbed them in meeting expenses and 

 now caused the loss of them by capture. Yet a further pre 

 vention commonly resulted from appropriations by chiefs 

 and kings. Their unrestrained greed either made saving 

 futile, or by forcing men to hoard what they saved, rendered 

 it useless for reproductive purposes. 



Another obstacle existed. Going back, as the idea of 

 capital does, to days w T hen cattle and sheep mainly formed a 

 rich man s movable property, and indicating, as the w T ord 

 does, the number of &quot; heads &quot; in his flocks and herds, it is 

 clear that no fund of the kind which the word now connotes 



was possible. Cattle and sheep could not be disposed of at 



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