CAPITAL THE MOTHER OF LABOUR 155 



Oes not answer as an article of human diet, and 

 iscuit does. So the usefulness of mutton lies 

 Lainly in certain chemical compounds which it 

 mtains : the sheep gets them out of grass ; we 

 innot live on grass, but we can on mutton. 



Now, herbaceous and all other green plants 

 .and alone among terrestrial natural bodies, in so 

 ,r as, under the influence of light, they possess 

 le power to build up, out of the carbonic acid 

 is in the atmosphere, water and certain nitro- 

 mous and mineral salts, those substances which 

 L the animal organism are utilised as work-stuff, 

 hey are the chief and, for practical purposes, the 

 de producers of that vital capital which we have 

 en to be the necessary antecedent of every act 



labour. Every green plant is a laboratory in 

 bich, so long as the sun shines upon it, materials 

 rnished by the mineral world, gases, water, 

 line compounds, are worked up into those food- 

 uffs without which animal life cannot be carried 

 i. And since, up to the present time, synthetic 

 emistry has not advanced so far as to achieve 

 is feat, the green plant may be said to be the 

 ily living worker whose labour directly results 



the production of that vital capital which is 

 e necessary antecedent of human labour. 1 Nor 



this statement a paradox involving perpetual 



1 It remains to be seen whether the plants which have no 

 lorophyll, and flourish in darkness, such as the Fungi, can 

 e upon purely mineral food. 



