IV CAPITAL-THE MOTHER OF LABOUR. 181 



" hirer " or " wage-giver." Therefore, when a 

 man in " the original state of things " gathered 

 fruit or killed game for his own sustenance, the 

 fruit or the game could be called his " wages " 

 only in a figurative sense; as one sees if the term 

 " hire," which has a more limited connotation, is 

 substituted for " wage." If not, it must be as- 

 sumed that the savage hired himself to get his 

 own dinner; whereby we are led to the tolerably 

 absurd conclusion that, as in the " state of na- 

 ture " he was his own employer, the " master " 

 and the labourer, in that model age, appropriated 

 the produce in equal shares! And if this should 

 be not enough, it has already been seen that, in 

 the hunting state, man is not even an accessory 

 of production of vital capital; he merely con- 

 sumes what nature produces. 



According to the author of " Progress and 

 Poverty " political economists have been deluded 

 by a " fallacy which has entangled some of the 

 most acute minds in a web of their own spinning." 



It is in the use of the word capital in two senses. In 

 the primary proposition that capital is necessary to the 

 exertion of productive labour, the term " capital " is un- 

 derstood as including all food, clothing, shelter, &c.; 

 whereas in the deductions finally drawn from it, the term 

 is used in its common and legitimate meaning of wealth 

 devoted, not to the immediate gratification of desire, but 

 to the procurement of more wealth — of wealth in the 

 hands of employers as distinguished from labourers 

 (p. 40). 



