84 AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 



test, and there is no reasonable calculation made, 

 such as limits the rate of interest paid upon true 

 capital. In this case, too, the principal is spent un- 

 productively. 



Whether this distinction between capital and usury 

 be admitted or not, I wish to press for recognition of 

 the fact that the money-lender's advances to the 

 villager, for the support of himself and his family 

 during the lean months before the harvest, are not 

 capital. It is usual, I know, to include the food of the 

 labourer in capital on the ground that it enables the 

 labourer to play his part in the production of wealth. 

 But I contend that men work in order to eat ; they do 

 not eat in order to work. Wealth which has satisfied 

 a human want has discharged the ultimate aim for 

 which it was produced, whether the want satisfied be 

 the poor man's hunger or the rich man's love of osten- 

 tation. Capital, in my opinion, is wealth in such a 

 form that it is incapable of satisfying human wants 

 directly. A plough, a steam-engine, or an irrigation 

 canal, cannot directly satisfy human wants ; they are 

 valuable only because they help to produce things 

 which will directly satisfy human wants. Seed, which 

 has always been recognised to be an ambiguous case, 

 is made unfit for human use when it is placed in the 

 ground — when, that is to say, the owner decides to 

 employ it as capital. The older economists would 

 have objected that wealth could not be produced unless 

 the labourers were supported until the harvest was 

 ripe or the work finished upon which they were 

 engaged. I admit that a store of provisions is a neces- 

 sary anterior condition to the production of all elaborate 

 forms of wealth ; if civilization is so little advanced 

 that the community has not a sufficient store of food 

 to carry it on from seed-time to harvest, the people 

 must obviously betake themselves to fishing, hunting, 

 and those means of obtaining food which give a quick 

 return. But there are many other characteristics of 



