BY E. M. JOHKSTON, F.L.S. 229 



which give commercial value to man's wealth.* It is clear 

 therefore that nothing can be further from the truth than the 

 assumption by Mr. Ogilvy that the energy of "the lower 

 ten millions " or the " masses " alone represent the active 

 factor that produces all wealth. 



The brains of man can alone be credited with invention and 

 discovery, not his muscular power. It is to the accumulations 

 of savings from personal consumption by the labourers of 

 former times that we are indebted for the stores devoted 

 to the construction of the powerful mechanical and other 

 auxiliaries now engaged in aiding the current labour of men, 

 and not, as falsely assumed, to the mere energy exerted by 

 those who happen to be the labourers or workmen of the 

 present moment. 



The large body of the capitalists of to-day are, broadly 

 speaking, really the natural descendants and inheritors of the 

 savings of former workmen, who not merely worked but 

 saved; and it is specially because of the savings of former 

 workers that we have now a vast accumulation of capital 

 invested in labour-saving appliances, and in works of 

 permanent utility to all men, and not generally because those 

 who saved were indebted to labour for their savings. All 

 labourers in the past, as well as in the present, did or do not 

 accumulate savings, and the descendants of those who did not 

 save have no just claim to the capital or accumulated savings 

 now largely in the possession of those who saved, or their 

 natural descendants. 



Of course the children of the former savers of capital are 

 thereby now often raised above the social scale of their fathers. 

 But this is natural ; for it must not be forgotten that the 

 affection and solicitude of parents for their children are ever 

 the active motive forces which induce parents to sacrifice 

 present personal gratification, and to save up in order that 

 their children may enjoy a larger amount of the world's 

 material satisfactions than their parents permitted themselves 

 to afford out of the fruit of their own labours. Take away 

 this powerful motive and you destroy the main source of the 

 savings which make capital accumulation a possibility. 

 Capital wealth, therefore, has not been wrongly abstracted 

 from the labourer as such. It is a real addition to the world's 

 power and wealth, solely built out of the savings of those who 

 providently abstained from consuming at the time the whole 

 of the fruits of the labour to which they were entitled, which 

 otherwise would have been as much lost to the world as if it 

 had been destroyed by fire. 



* See also p. 40-44 Koot Problems, 1st series, which also demonstrates that 

 Improvement in the Condition of the Individual is largely due to the Savings of 

 Anterior Labour (capital) skilfully applied as instruments aiding Production." 



