150 CAPITAL— THE MOTHER OF LABOUR, iv 



company the life of man is dependent upon the 

 pre-existence of a stock of material which is not 

 only of use to him, but which is disposed in such 

 a manner as to be utilisable with facility. And 

 I further imagine that the propriety of the ap- 

 plication of the term " capital " to this stock of 

 useful substance cannot be justly called in ques- 

 tion; inasmuch as it is easy to prove that the 

 essential constituents of the work-stuff accumu- 

 lated in the child's muscles have merely been 

 transferred from the store of food-stuffs which 

 everybody admits to be capital, by means of the 

 maternal organism to that of the child, in which 

 they are again deposited to await use. Every 

 subsequent act of labour, in like manner, involves 

 an equivalent consumption of the child's store of 

 work-stuff — ^its vital capital; and one of the main 

 objects of the process of breathing is to get rid 

 of some of the effects of that consumption. It 

 follows, then, that if no other than the respira- 

 tory work were going on in the organism, the 

 capital of work-stuff, which the child brought with 

 it into the world, must sooner or later be used up, 

 and the movements of breathing must come to 

 an end; just as the see-saw of the piston of a 

 steam-engine stops when the coal in the fireplace 

 has burnt away. 



Milk, however, is a stock of materials which 

 essentially consists of savings from the food-stuffs 

 supplied to the mother. And these savings are 



