BY E. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 175 



portioa of products created each year for actual consumption 

 and enjoyments. It is almost certain that as regards some of 

 the most valuable necessary natural products the balance 

 would be in favour of the workman. What immense capital 

 is devoted to making and working or developing railways, 

 steamships, sailing vessels, telegraph lines, machinery of all 

 kinds agricultural, farms for food and various textile products, 

 pastoral farms for the produce of animal meal and materials 

 for clothing, houses for shelter of men, animals, and products. 



What is usually termed " The Enormous Accumulations of 

 Wealth in our Times," "The Riches of Capitalists," are 

 really those tools or instruments themselves. But the owner 

 no more consumes or personally enjoys this form of commercial 

 wealth than does the poorest labourer who toils upon these 

 machines and instruments of his employer. This is seen at 

 once by asking for what jourpose is it that so much of the 

 vegetable and mineral products of the earth, and so much of 

 the former energies and labours of man have previously been 

 saved, abstracted, or diverted from former possible powers of 

 consumption and personal enjoyment ; and for what j^urpose 

 is it that capitalists and workmen alike devote such a large 

 portion of their present services in fresh creations, and to the 

 repairs of ihe consumption (tear and wear) of these very 

 machines which do not themselves enter into their personal 

 consumption or enjoyment, although they nominally make up 

 the greater part of the so-called accumulated wealth of 

 capital? The answer is very simple. Their sole end is the 

 production, transport, distribution, and protection of man's 

 primary wants — Food, clothing, shelter. Luxurious articles 

 of consumption are insignificant as compared with the 

 necessaries. 



It is mainly for food and clothing, therefoi'e, that all this 

 vast machinery of the capitalist has been created and set in 

 motion by the savings of previous efforts. How much, then, 

 of this ultimate fruit of the combined result of the capital of 

 machines and instruments, the forces of Nature, and men's 

 labour, is actually absorbed or consumed by the rich capitalist, 

 as compared with the poor servant or artisan ? 



Let us see : 



(1.) The human body can only consume and assimilate a 

 certain quantity of food per day. The old, sickly, 

 and very young cannot consume or assimilate so 

 much as the strong, healthy persons of youth and 

 prime of life. Health and hard physical employ- 

 ment cause the body to burn more food just for 

 the same reason as greater energy exhausted by a 

 steam engine demands a much higher consumption 

 of fuel. 



