FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 205 



an income in the form of other goods. There are certain things 

 commonly called consumers' goods which are also sometimes 

 called capital. Capital thus includes not only all producers' goods, 

 but also those consumers' goods which are used by their owners 

 (as distinct from their users) to get an income, that is, consumers' 

 goods whose owners loan, rent, or hire them to users. To their 

 owners, at any rate, they are capital or sources of income, for capi- 

 tal is wealth which is used to get an income. An income is under- 

 stood to mean a quantity of goods and not a flow of immaterial 

 satisfactions such as are furnished by goods which are not capital. 



However, a distinction is sometimes made between these two 

 kinds of capital, the one being called productive or social capital, 

 the other acquisitive or private capital. Producers' goods, or 

 productive capital, are called social capital because they increase 

 the productive power of the whole community, and the more of 

 this kind of capital there is, the more will the whole community 

 be able to produce. Consumers' goods which are loaned, rented, 

 or hired by their owners to their users are called private as 

 distinguished from social capital, because they do not add any- 

 thing to the productive power of the community. They are a 

 means merely of redistributing the wealth already produced ; 

 that is, they are a source of income to their individual owners, 

 but not to society as a whole. It is the productive capital only 

 which we need to consider in this chapter, since private or ac- 

 quisitive capital, as defined above, is not a factor in agricultural 

 production. 



That land is different from capital and belongs in a separate 

 class is generally conceded, though they also have much in 

 common. From the standpoint of the accountant or of the pri- 

 vate business man, the differences are not great, and land is 

 frequently included under capital. In the accounts of a private 

 business it may be so treated and no confusion will result ; but 

 from the standpoint of the economist, who looks at the problem 



