DISTRIBUTION OF AGRICULTURAL INCOME 309 



whenever one purchases a tool and whenever one spends time 

 in making a tool. If you purchase a tool, you give up the 

 purchasing power which would have enabled you to buy some 

 article of consumption. You do not want the tool for its own 

 sake ; you want it only because of the things it will enable you 

 to get in the future, but you must wait for them. If you spend 

 time and labor in making a tool, you use up energy which 

 you might have spent in play, or in getting some article of 

 consumption, and waiting is involved just as though you had 

 purchased the tool. If, after you have made the tool, some one 

 else buys it of you, he thereby relieves you of further waiting, 

 wh]le he, having paid for it, must therefore wait for its products 

 to recompense him. You will ordinarily be so glad to be re- 

 lieved of further waiting as to sell it at a price which will enable 

 him to realize a surplus eventually. That surplus is interest. 

 If, however, you have yourself used other tools in making that 

 tool, you will have already done some waiting, and part of the 

 price which you get for the tool will pay for the labor which 

 you have put into it, and part for the tools which you have used. 

 This in turn will in part recompense you for the original cost of 

 these tools, and in part pay you for having waited. This last 

 sum will be interest. 



Waiting. Waiting is, of course, merely another word for " sav- 

 ing." This analysis has been given primarily to show the exact 

 nature of the process by which capital originates and interest 

 arises. Though certain mistaken reformers are nowadays trying 

 to teach the contrary doctrine, this analysis will help to show how 

 well grounded is the common-sense view that thrift and saving 

 and forethought are economic virtues second only to industry it- 

 sell. If there is one lesson more than another which the Amer- 

 ican people need to have dinned into their ears until they learn 

 it thoroughly, it is that the man who saves is a public benefactor 

 and the man who spends needlessly is not. Rich and poor alike 



