182 CAPITAL— THE MOTHER OF LABOUR. iv 



I am by no means concerned to defend the 

 political economists who are thus charged with 

 blundering; but I shall be surprised to learn that 

 any have carried the art of self-entanglement to 

 the degree of perfection exhibited by this passage. 

 Who has ever imagined that wealth which, in the 

 hands of an employer, is capital, ceases to be capi- 

 tal if it is in the hands of a labourer? Suppose 

 a workman to be paid thirty shillings on Saturday 

 evening for six days' labour, that thirty shillings 

 comes out of the employer's capital, and receives 

 the name of " wages " simply because it is ex- 

 changed for labour. In the workman's pocket, 

 as he goes home, it is a part of his capital, in 

 exactly the same sense as, half an hour before, it 

 was part of the employer's capital; he is a capi- 

 talist just as much as if he were a Kothschild. 

 Suppose him to be a single man, whose cooking 

 and household matters are attended to by the peo- 

 ple of the house in which he has a room; then 

 the rent which he pays them out of this capital 

 is, in part, wages for their labour, and he is, so 

 far, an employer. If he saves one shilling out 

 of his thirty, he has, to that extent, added to 

 his capital when the next Saturday comes round. 

 And if he puts his saved shillings week by week 

 into the Savings Bank, the difference between him 

 and the most bloated of bankers is simply one of 

 degree. 



At page 42, we are confidently told that " la- 



