176 ROOT MATTERS IN SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS. 



This is the reason why an average, strong, healthy navvy 

 can and does consume a nnich greater quantity or weight of 

 food in the day than the less robust city clerk or the brain- 

 worried financier. Similarly, it is safe to affirm this of all 

 persons who are obliged to put their bones and muscles into 

 greater activities than their brains, and hence it is reasonable 

 to state that man for man the average food consumed and 

 enjoyed during the life of a labourer is much greater than 

 that personally consumed by those whose physical exertions are 

 smaller, as in the case of clerks, shopkeepers, teachers, pro- 

 fessional men, bankers, and rich people. As the production, 

 transport, and distribution of this food for consumption is by 

 far the greatest object for which all the capitalist's savings 

 and machinery have been put in motion, and must continue 

 so, it follows that at least in this respect the wealth of food, 

 the chief primary want ; wealth in highest utility as well as 

 their wealth of exchange, the end and aim of the greater part 

 of all wealth in capital, is more largely distributed among 

 and consumed by the poorer classes than is the case with the 

 rich. It is true luxurious foods, having a relatively higher 

 price, are to be found more on the rich man's table ; but the 

 limits which determine what the rich man really can consume 

 of common and rare substances must again be reckoned with. 

 When we regard the cheap foods now found on the humblest 

 cotter's table, and much of which, because of former rarity 

 and price (tea, coffee, spices, etc.), are still termed luxuries,, 

 we can well perceive the utter insignificance of the limited 

 quantities of o^are food monopolised by the rich, more costli/ 

 because rare ; not because of superiority, or because in its 

 production it originally demanded more of the gratuitous^ 

 forces of Natxire, the devotion of more capital, or the expendi- 

 ture of more lalour — but mere variety — one of the chief 

 characteristics of that part of nominal exchange ivealth termed 

 pleonexia. 



The next item, clothing, has to be considered, and here again 

 it may be affirmed that the tear and wear of hard work of the 

 labourer demand that his clothing should be stronger. He, as 

 a rule, therefore, personally consumes a greater weight of the 

 produce of the sheep and the cotton plant than the rich man, and 

 however dirty and ill-looking they may seem from the nature 

 of the labourer's employment, the production is as great a tax 

 upon the land and the forces of nature ; upon the means of 

 transport, upon the capitalist's looms, and uj)on manufacturing 

 labour, as the clothes of his employer. The silks and satins, 

 like rare foods, are more beautiful and rarer ; but their high 

 price is on account of rarity, not because they are more useful. 

 Indeed, they are for the real purpose of clothing far inferior 

 in general utility to the commoner cheap woollen and cotton 



