2 OBSERVATIONS KEGAEDING ACCUMULATED CAPITAL AVEALTH, 



From a true economic point of view, there can be n& 

 justification for the exclusion of man, '^the wage^earner," 

 from the category of those things "whicli give (valid) 

 claim upon the products of the future." 



There cannot be any doubt but that man, free, and 

 owned by himself, should he a far more effective value- 

 producing instrument than the average bond-slave owned 

 by another. Yet those who take a restricted view of the 

 elements which go tO' form the aggregate of "accumulated 

 capital wealth" exclude the free "wage-earner," who, un- 

 doubtedly, is also- the more effective economic producing 

 machine, not because his life expectation value of average 

 annual earnings would fail to afford him indisputable 

 "claim upon the prodviiits of the future" — but, merely, be- 

 cause he, as a productive machine, happened not to be 

 Oiwnecl by another person, as in the case of a slave, horse, 

 or steam-engine. 



The untenability of the standpoint of those who 

 exclude the free wage-earner as an important instrument 

 of production is at once obvious if we could conceive of 

 a nation suddenly overpowered, and reduced to the condi- 

 tion of an enslaved community. If this occurred, the 

 nation's nominal accumulated wealth wouia be at once 

 marvellously increased. At the same time, its real accumu- 

 lated capital wealth wouj.^i., in all probability, have shrunk 

 in value. 



The mere expenditure of a year's labour — time, en- 

 eirgy, and skill, by man — the greatest of all economic in- 

 struments of production, no more destroys the whole of 

 his life's capital energy value, as an economic producing 

 instrument, than can a single year's tear and wear wholly 

 destroy the remaining capital value of his, often shorter- 

 lived, inanimate tools and instruments of production. If 

 the still unexhausted producing power of the latter be 

 assesiSisd as having a "present capital valu:e" based on their 

 estimated years' life of annual revenue-yielding power, it 

 is, surely, reasonable to infer that "man" the major 

 revenue^yielding instrument of production — with a life- 

 expectation practically interminable (as regards the ever- 

 continuous State breadwinner) should also be assessed on 

 the same basis, as an element^ — indeed the principal one^ — 

 of the real accumulated capital wealth of a State at any 

 point of time. 



We may be assured, therefore, that when we regard 

 real things, and real necessary services — whicTi, in the very 

 act of consumption, compose and satisfy all the needs and 



