CAPITAL-GOODS AS A FACTOR IN AGRICUL- 

 TURAL PRODUCTION 



Introduction 



The economist who essays to give an account of the origin of 

 capital may well use agriculture as his text. Our industrial evolution 

 started with agriculture, and our account of the development of 

 industrial equipment may well go back to the point where husbandry 

 begins. Among the first primitive implements that men chose or 

 fashioned from natural objects were the digging- stick, the harvester's 

 basket, flint or bone hoes, fences to protect some spontaneous crop 

 from animal depredations, or scarecrows and nets to safeguard them 

 from thieving birds. To produce these goods the savage had to 

 increase his labor beyond the limit demanded by mere subsistence. 

 Instead of stopping work the moment his belly was filled, he must 

 needs labor on, to fashion new equipment for tomorrow's labor. Or, 

 when he had laid by enough of food to keep him from hunger during 

 the unproductive season, he might not lapse into idleness. Dawning 

 foresight urged him to gather and store yet more of seeds and grains 

 and tubers that something might remain to be planted at the advent 

 of the next growing season. 



But capital is not born of this single parent. If Industry be the 

 fecund father, Abstinence is not less the fostering mother. It has 

 been suggested that the first animals to be domesticated were simply 

 the few saved from an extraordinary catch, instead of being wasted 

 in an orgy of feasting. Certain it is that when surplus crops had been 

 garnered or when a few animals had been caught and tamed, self- 

 control must be exercised if. the fruits of this unwonted toil were to 

 lay the foundations of an enlarged scheme of production in the future. 



Granting the importance of the early pastoral and agricultural 

 experiments of the human family in the beginnings of capital forma- 

 tion, it is often asserted that the vast accumulations of capital-goods 

 which have characterized the modern epoch (since the coming of power 

 machinery) have occurred outside of agriculture. As a matter of fact, 

 a considerable part of the whole process of creating agricultural 



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