164 CAPITAL — THE MOTHER OF LABOUR 



IV 



suppose three islands, like Gran Canaria, Teneriffe 

 and Lanzerote, in the Canaries, to be quite cut off 

 from the rest of the world. Let Gran Canaria 

 be inhabited by grain-raisers, Teneriffe by cattle- 

 breeders ; while the population of Lanzerote 

 (which we may suppose to be utterly barren) 

 consists of carpenters, woollen manufacturers, and 

 shoemakers. Then the facts of daily experience 

 teach us that the people of Lanzerote could never 

 have existed unless they came to the island 

 provided with a stock of food-stuffs ; and that 

 they could not continue to exist, unless that stock, 

 as it was consumed, was made up by contributions 

 from the vital capital of either Gran Canaria, or 

 Teneriffe, or both. Moreover, the carpenters of 

 Lanzerote could do nothing, unless they were 

 provided with wood from the other islands ; nor 

 could the wool spinners and weavers or the 

 shoemakers work without wool and skins from the 

 same sources. The wood and the wool and the 

 skins are, in fact, the capital without which their 

 work as manufacturers in their respective trades 

 is impossible — so that the vital and other capital 

 supplied by Gran Canaria and Teneriffe is most 

 indubitably the necessary antecedent of the 

 industrial labour of Lanzerote. It is perfectly 

 true that by the time the wood, the wool, and the 

 skins reached Lanzerote a good deal of labour in 

 cutting, shearing, skinning, transport, and so on, 

 would have been spent upon them. But this 



