186 CAPITAL THE MOTHER OF LABOUR iv 



engaged in manufacturing that product, the 

 ratio of that accumulated value, at any stage of 

 the process, to the value of the finished product 

 is extremely inconstant, and often small; while, 

 to other persons, the value of the unfinished pro- 

 duct may be nothing, or even a minus quantity. 

 A house-timber merchant, for example, might 

 consider that wood which had been worked into 

 the ribs of a ship was spoiled that is, had less 

 value than it had as a log. 



According to " Progress and Poverty," there was, 

 really, no advance of capital while the great St. 

 Gothard tunnel was cut. Suppose that, as the Swiss 

 and the Italian halves of the tunnel approached 

 to within half a kilometre, that half-kilometre had 

 turned out to be composed of practically impene- 

 trable rock would anybody have given a centime 

 for the unfinished tunnel ? And if not, how comes 

 it that " the creation of value does not depend on 

 the finishing of the product " ? 



I think it may be not too much to say that, of 

 all the political delusions which are current in this 

 queer world, the very stupidest are those which 

 assume that labour and capital are necessarily 

 antagonistic ; that all capital is produced by labour 

 and therefore, by natural right, is the property of 

 the labourer; that the possessor of capital is a robber 

 who preys on the workman and appropriates to him- 

 self that which he has had no share in producing. 



