FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 209 



every one, on the average, save more than enough to replace 

 the worn-out capital, and you have a community growing in 

 wealth and productive power. The same thing can be stated 

 more briefly thus : Let consumption equal or exceed produc- 

 tion, and you have industrial decay ; let production exceed 

 consumption, and you have industrial progress. 



In what sense capital is productive. Persons engaged iri 

 nursing special reforms or revolutions have written a great 

 deal to prove that capital is unproductive. Such arguments 

 invariably begin by confusing the meaning of capital. Let it 

 once be clearly understood that capital is tools, and no person 

 with a sound mind could say with a straight face that it is un- 

 productive, for that would mean that tools are not useful. If 

 tools are useful at all, they must be useful for something. That 

 something is production. They enable us to produce more than 

 we could without their help. That is the sense, and the only 

 sense, in which they were ever said to be productive. 



It is argued, however, that though tools are undoubtedly use- 

 ful, capital in its first and original form is not productive. We 

 have seen in preceding paragraphs that, nowadays at- least, cap- 

 ital seems to take the form of money in its first stage, that the 

 individual who wishes to own or control capital ordinarily gets 

 possession first of a sum of money, either directly or by means 

 of ( redit. But while this is the usual process, it is by no means the 

 only one, nor is it essential. It is essential, however, that the in- 

 dividual should get possession of more wealth than he consumes ; 

 thai: is, he must possess himself of a sum of surplus wealth. 

 Whether this surplus be in the form of money or not does not 

 matter. Is this surplus wealth, considered merely as a surplus, 

 productive ? Not unless it is actually used as a means of increas- 

 ing future production. If it is so used, it is not inaccurate to 

 speak of it as productive, though there need be no quarrel over 

 the meaning of words. It is only necessary to agree that it is 



