BY K. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 225 



From this reasoning it is almost conclusive that a strong 

 healthy navvy can and does consume more weight of the pro- 

 ducts of the soil, of the flour mill and the weaver's loom, 

 than the less robust city clerk or the brain worried financier ; 

 the mere quality or rarity of the materials involving more cost 

 in some of the materials of the rich is comparatively 

 insignificant and involves no more tax on the soil, on the 

 capitalist's machines, nor on the workman's labour. 



Further, it can be shown that if the steam engines alone of 

 the capitalist perform more work than twice the number of the 

 whole working population of the earth, and if these only form 

 a part of his machinery, tools, and instruments, known 

 vaguely or concealed under nominal values as " capital," it 

 follows that the rich capitalist, or organising entrepreneur, 

 cannot or does not abstract from his profits the same propor- 

 tion of his income towards his personal wants and enjoyments 

 as the workman does. On the contrary, what he can directly 

 consume personally of the primary satisfactions which make up 

 the bulk of consumable wealth is limited by the same natural 

 laws as the humblest workman ; and the necessities of repair- 

 ing the tear and wear of his costly machines (real capital) or 

 the passion or necessity to increase the number and power of 

 his machines, and to protect and keep them ever at work, 

 abstract the greater portion of his increasing or decreasing 

 profits, which the thoughtless imagine are absorbed alto 

 gether in personal consumption. 



What is usually termed " The enormous accumulations of 

 Wealth in our times," " The riches of capitalists," do not 

 consist of fine houses, luxurious equipages, money or grand 

 parks, or if so, it only forms a most insignificant portion of it. 

 The great bulk of the nominal and real wealth of capitalists 

 consists of land improvements, mines, railways, tramways, 

 ships, canals, stores, warehouses, manufactories, machines, 

 tools and instruments, etc., themselves : and though rightly 

 included in the aggregate wealth of a country by statisticians, 

 these do not in any sense enter into the personal consumption of 

 the rich owner any more than they enter into the personal 

 consumption of the workman engaged in connection with these 

 forms of national wealth. 



The Fruits op Labouk. 



Familiar phrases, such as " The fruits of labour," " The 

 toiling masses," " Man shall live by the sweat of his brow," 

 " Capital is the fruit of labour," and such like, though correct 

 enough as pleasing figures of speech, are too often wrested 

 from their proper uses to adorn the fallacious arguments or 

 rhetorical displays of well meaning, kind hearted people, in 

 whom the logical faculty too often is easily overborne by 



