168 CAPITAL-THB MOTHER OF LABOUR. iv 



of drawers — therefore my wages are the produce of 

 my day's labour " — there is no great harm in such 

 metaphorical speech, so long as the poor man does 

 not delude himself into the supposition that it 

 represents the exact truth. " Virtually " is apt to 

 cover more intellectual sins than " charity " does 

 moral delicts. After what has been said, it surely 

 must be plain enough that each day's work has 

 involved the consumption of the carpenter's vital 

 capital, and the fashioning of his timber, at the 

 expense of more or less consumption of those 

 forms of capital. Whether the a -\-h to be ex- 

 changed for the chest has been advanced as a loan, 

 or is paid daily or weekly as wages, or, at some 

 later time, as the price of a finished commodity — 

 the essential element of the transaction, and the 

 only essential element, is, that it must, at least, 

 effect the replacement of the vital capital con- 

 sumed. Neither boards nor chest of drawers are 

 eatable; and, so far from the carpenter having 

 produced the essential part of his wages by each 

 day's labour, he has merely wasted that labour, un- 

 less somebody who happens to want a chest of draw- 

 ers offers to exchange vital capital, or something 

 that can procure it, equivalent to the amount con- 

 sumed during the process of manufacture.* 



That it should be necessary, at this time of day, 

 to set forth such elementary truths as these may 

 * See the discussion of this subject further on. 



