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



13 



together, in the earlier part of their lives, are now enabled, 

 after satisfying the three primary wants and comforts, to 

 indulge the prevailing passion of comfortable people, i.e., 

 the accumulation of wealth or power over wealth. This 

 passion in itself is at this stage undoubtedly a personal 

 luxury ; but, unlike the luxuries which are directed to greater 

 personal consumption, it is fortunately directed to that form 

 of immaterial enjoyment which springs from the knowledge 

 that the owner possesses the power to direct the mode, or 

 secure the best conditions in which wealth may be further 

 employed. Fortunately for the world at large, self-interest 

 at this stage converts into a virtue what otherwise would be 

 a vice : for the passion to further secure the luxury of power 

 over wealth, and to augment it, restricts personal indulgence 

 in further consuming the material fruits of labour and the 

 material gratuitous stores of nature, and runs parallel with that 

 course which favours increased production relative to numbers, 

 involving the improvement of the social and economic 

 condition of all labourers ; i.e., the wealthy man or industrial 

 chief does not, or cannot, increase his own personal consumption 

 of the material fruits of labour, skill, enterprise and the 

 gratuitous gifts of nature beyond a moderate standard : the 

 unconsumed material surplus— by passion, self-interest and 

 even the better motives — is necessarily devoted to multiplying 

 and sustaining the inanimate, costly, and powerful permanent 

 aids to human productive power, which alone distinguishes 

 civilised populous communities from those of the miserable 

 and bare-handed savage, whose command of a continent of 

 the richest land upon the globe is too feeble to support in 

 comfort a few insignificant wandering tribes. 



A.nterior Savings the True Source of Capital Invested 

 in the Creation and Distribution op Necessary 

 Satisfactions. 



Capital invested in land, railways, ships, canals, mines, 

 mills, etc., and all labour-aiding machines and instruments 

 devoted to the production and distribution of man's satisfac- 

 tions, are the fruits of that portion of the products of 

 anterior labour saved from the actual earners' consumption, 

 and devoted or transformed into permanent and powerful 

 skilled auxiliaries of present labour ; and consequently it is 

 an error to assume, as many do, that such forms of capital 

 are the fruits of the major part of anterior labour already 

 absorbed in current personal consumption. 



That is — the capital in machines and instruments now 

 devoted to production and distribution is derived from the 

 saved products of anterior labour engaged in production, 



