178 CAPITAL THE MOTHER OF LABOUR IV 



Again : 



Or, if I take a piece of leather and work it up into a pair of 

 shoes, the shoes are my wages the reward of my exertion. 

 Surely they are not drawn from capital either my capital or 

 anybody else's capital but are brought into existence by the 

 labour of which they became the wages ; and, in obtaining this 

 pair of shoes as the wages of my labour, capital is not even 

 momentarily lessened one iota. For if we call in the idea of 

 capital, my capital at the beginning consists of the piece of 

 leather, the thread, &c. (p. 34). 



It takes away one's breath to have such a con- 

 catenation of fallacies administered in the space 

 of half a paragraph. It does not seem to have 

 occurred to our economical reformer to imagine 

 whence his " capital at the beginning," the " leather, 

 thread, &c." came. I venture to suppose that 

 leather to have been originally cattle-skin ; and 

 since calves and oxen are not flayed alive, the 

 existence of the leather implies the lessening of 

 that form of capital by a very considerable iota. 

 It is, therefore, as sure as anything can be that, 

 in the long run, the shoes are drawn from that 

 which is capital par excellence ; to wit, cattle. It 

 is further beyond doubt that the operation of 

 tanning must involve loss of capital in the shape 

 of bark, to say nothing of other losses ; and that 

 the use of the awls and knives of the shoemaker 

 involves loss of capital in the shape of the store of 

 iron ; further, the shoemaker has been enabled to 

 do his work not only by the vital capital expended 

 during the time occupied in making the pair of 



