46 THE EMPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL 



wholesale what they then retail, their destroyed 

 capital is replaced by a capital of greater value. 



Like the artisan, the manufacturing employer 

 uses up and replaces three capitals. Although 

 the employer does not himself execute work in 

 the manner of the artisan, he is continually 

 having his stock of one kind destroyed as capital, 

 and changed into other more valuable articles, 

 by means of his workmen. And though he does 

 not exhaust his own strength, he does, though 

 slowly, wear out his machines ; and these repre- 

 sent an important part of his capital. He re- 

 places them from time to time by more effective 

 machines, and he sometimes does so though the 

 old machines are not yet worn out. 



The manufacturing employer uses up also his 

 share of food and clothing in the same manner 

 as the artisan ; and he also uses up coal and oil 

 for his machines, by which he depletes the stocks 

 of the coal merchant and the oil merchant. These 

 then replace their destroyed stocks to their own 

 advantage, just as the baker and the butcher and 

 the tailor and the draper replace theirs. 



Thus we might go the round of the various 

 descriptions of employers, and find them con- 

 stantly engaged in destroying their stocks of 

 articles of different kinds and replacing those 

 articles by others of enhanced value. The same 

 general principle is at work all through — one 

 article, chiefly raw material, losing its identity 

 in giving birth, by work done on it, to another 

 of greater value. 



Such an employer is the farmer. Suppose a 



