DESTRUCTION OF CAPITAL 43 



be selling at two hundred pounds apiece one day, 

 the next day wild rumours may have sunk the 

 price to five shillings ; in the following month it 

 may be up again to ten pounds. Men gain and 

 men lose by this ; but capital does not ; for it is 

 the stuff got out of the mine, sent to market, and 

 sold, that forms the capital-value of the mine. If 

 capital is to be increased it can only be in one 

 way, by the destruction of capital. This is easily 

 explained. 



A farmer has in store a stock of wheat which 

 forms a part of his capital. He desires to grow 

 wheat which shall form a part of his capital at 

 the succeeding harvest. He therefore withdraws 

 from his present stock of wheat a portion, which 

 he puts into the ground. He has thus re- 

 duced his present capital ; in other words, he 

 has destroyed capital to that extent ; but the 

 result is an increased capital at the following 

 harvest. The capital value of a forest of Douglas 

 pines in British Columbia is not perhaps very 

 great. Whatever it be, that capital is destroyed 

 when the trees are cut down and lie idle on the 

 ground ; the forest has ceased to be. When the 

 pines have been floated to the sawmills, and cut 

 up into lumber, a new capital has been created, 

 and that capital is very much greater than the 

 capital destroyed, when the original forest was 

 cut down. When this lumber has been delivered 

 to traders, and sold by them to farmers and other 

 builders, it is immediately set upon by a swarm 

 of carpenters and destroyed as lumber. The 

 capital represented by the lumber has been 



