26 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Commodities wliicli are removed from tlie circle of consumption and 

 reproduction practically cease to be wealth, and their owner to be a capi- 

 talist. A steam-engine which is not at work might as weU be in the moon 

 for all the usefulness to man which it possesses, and the owner gets no 

 benefit from it. If instead of a steam-engine, a stock of food and clothing 

 is stored up, it is. also lost to the world ; the selfish owner may live on it 

 for years, but when it is consumed he has no more capital. Had he given 

 his stock to workmen, on condition that they should work for him, he would 

 have done them good, by furnishing them with food, and his stock of wealth 

 would have been larger than ever, for labour can, under ordinary conditions, 

 produce more than the labourers consume when producing it. Such a man 

 is a miser in the truest meaning of the word ; fortunately, no one does 

 store up actual wealth in this way ; if hoarded at all, it is always converted 

 into capital in the form of gold, and the storing of gold does no mjury to the 

 community. The hoarder loses a revenue which he might have had, but 

 which he generously leaves to be divided between aU his brother money- 

 owners throughout the world. 



The " actual cost " of a commodity may be said to be the labour which 

 has been expended in producing it, including a proportionate part of that 

 which had been expended in making the tools used in its prodiiction. If the 

 commodity be made in an out-of-the-way place, the extra labour employed in 

 conveying to the workmen, the food, clothing, and other things they con- 

 sume, should also be added, the food itself, however, and the other things, 

 or rather the labour of producing them should not be added, nor the labour 

 equal to that necessary to convey them to people not living in an out-of-the- 

 way place, for they would have been consumed in any case, or if not, it 

 would not be because the workmen were idle, but because they were 

 not capitalists. 



The " 2^^'op^^' cost" of a commodity is the actual cost it would take, 

 under fairly judicious direction, to produce a similar commodity or a 

 different one which would be equally, and in the same manner, agreeable or 

 useful to man. A chemist may spend great labour in digging minerals from 

 the earth and extracting from them hydrogen and oxygen, and in makmg 

 these combine to form water. The "actual cost " of the water thus produced 

 would be the labour expended by the chemist; the " proper cost " would 

 be the labour required to draw a bucket of water from the spring. 



A disregard of this obvious distinction has cost, and is still costing the 

 world very dearly, in false political economy, and is the root of half the 

 popular errors in the theory of money. 



There are so few commodities of which the actual and proper cost are 

 greatly different that it is forgotten that they can be different. 



