THE CLAIMS OF CAPITAL CONSIDERED, 
 
 By William Brown. 
 
 The conflict between labor and capital becomes more and more 
 the struggle of the age. On botji si£le,s, $herp aye t>tanic»powers 
 i engaged in what appears to be liead 1 ongv*di§or i -tafti i>k n g war. 
 i There may be now and again a lull i$L # tJi$ tQj&tgsb-rtl&ife may be some 
 ; kind, of truce proclaimed—some good sort of people may .approach 
 i the combatants and induce t^ieji^c^Xse^sojTto-^ay dqwn; their 
 Arms. But to the calm lookeF-ojitiils # efj^ent # # th?ii *all the»fin$ talk 
 ; bout mutual forbearance, symp&tfrf ahd' go'od* will,* i*s**only a 
 makeshift; that each party returns.to. w<>rk»with i'gs £as£ions but 
 restrained for the moment or for th§ cfceasi©®**; aod j5pt only 
 it he expectation of a speedy renewal*of *®t&e* contest** but*with a 
 I determination, when the time again comes round, to fight it out to 
 I the bitter end. Is it not one of the strange things in this strange 
 jj world that industry should thus be constantly arrayed against its 
 [own productions—the wealth of the world in constant antagonism 
 I to the producers of that wealth? After all that has been lost and 
 | won, can it be said that either party is in a better position, or per- 
 jiunnentty secure from further strife? 
 
 | Providence is constantly calling us, by the events transpiring 
 I around us, to consider our ways. The struggle between capital and 
 | labor, whatever be the issue, ought to direct theminds of thoughtful 
 I and reflecting men to a subject of unquestionaOTy the first import- 
 | anoe in relation to the general well-being of society. On the surface 
 £ of this question, and amidst the contending factions there, we shall 
 | glean little or nothing. We must dig deep for the information 
 I requisite to enable us to form a correct judgment of the matters 
 | n dispute. I propose therefore in the present paper to make some 
 | examination into the claims advanced by capital, with the view 
 I of ascertaining if in any way or in any measure, industry, out of 
 I its resources, can yield to these claims ; and will endeavor at the 
 I same time, to weave into my argument some essential principles in 
 | political economy, without a proper consideration of which, the 
 B great questions at issue will never be satisfactorily settled. 
 
 | ~ I need not trouble the reader with any long quotations from the 
 I economists in definition of the term “capital.” It is sufficiently under- 
 H stood I daresay by the general reader. The following extracts from Mr. 
 I Mill’s Principles of Political Economy will for the present suffice. 
 
 “ It has been seen in the preceding chapters lhat besides the pri- 
 p: mary and universal requisites of production, labor and natural 
 | agents, there is another requisite without which no productive oper- 
 K ations beyond the rude and scanty beginnings of primitive industry 
 S are possible: namely a stock, previouslyaccumulated, of the products 
 B of former labor. This accumulated stock of the produce of labor 
 K is termed capital. The function of capital in production it is of the 
 ■ utmost importance thoroughly to understand, since a number of the 
 R erroneous notions with which our subject is infested originate in 
 1 an imperfect and confused apprehension of this point. 
 
2 
 
 u Capital, bv persons wholly unused to reflect on the subject, is 
 supposed to be synonymous with money. Money is no more 
 synonymous with capital than it is with wealth. Money cannot, in 
 itself, perform any part of the office of capital, since it can afford no 
 assistance to production. To do this, it must be exchanged for 
 other things, and anything which is susceptible of being exchanged 
 for other things is capable of contributing to production in the 
 same degree. What capital does for production, is to afford the 
 shelter, protection, tools and materials which the work requires, 
 and to feed and otherwise maintain the laborer during the process. 
 These ane the. ger^ices^ jvhjch # present labor requires from past, and 
 from the , ,*f)ro ii dru(;b*pC^a^t‘labor* Whatever things are destined 
 for this us$—^$s;tm^d**to Supply productive labor witlrthese various 
 pre-requisites—are capital!” * * * 
 
 The* abh’Ce ^jtrarct may* pf >akeu as representing the views 
 generally.held ‘by economises? *(mt tlie subject of capital. The 
 defimfidilS fhay bfc considered aS tn.sbme measure correct. They 
 are not su«ch as^injheyi&e .of.e^act language, I would employ. I think 
 a better^akdhpSr© gu^delj Tlpfijjition can be given—better in so far 
 as it woulc£* oltfse %ew£ry <(£qqy against the entrance of those 
 “erroneous notions with which our subject is infested,” of which 
 complaint is justly made by Mr. Mill. I have elsewhere had occasion 
 to remark that political economy, more than any other science, has 
 been worm-eaten with that incautious language which a modern 
 writer has aptly declared to be u the dry rot of the world.” Bearing I 
 upon, as it does in every direction, the most vital interests of 
 humanity, this great science demands, and can be satisfied with [ 
 nothing short of, perfect accuracy in thought and expression on the j 
 part of all its expounders. 
 
 I define capital simply as the produce , the toots , and the appliances 
 of labor. As a question of property, capital is the produce of labor— 
 as a question of productive agency, it is its tools and appliances. 
 This definition embraces all that can be said and all that can be de¬ 
 manded. The capitalist himself may feel alarmed at so simple a de¬ 
 finition, and may be inclined to regard it as one of those u hard 
 sayings” with which restless people are continually troubling the 
 world. But as the sweetest kernel may sometimes be found in the 
 roughest shell, so the most precious truths have not seldom come 
 to us enclosed in the hardest sayings. 
 
 Having made this statement, I think it is fair, before proceeding 
 further, that I should set forth what I consider the weak points in 
 Mr. Mill’s definition above quoted, a definition more or less objec¬ 
 tionable according to the interpretation which it may legitimately 
 bear. 
 
 He states that money in itself cannot perform any part of the 
 office of capital, since it can afford no assistance to production ; 
 that to do this, it must be exchanged for other things; and that 
 anything which is susceptible of being exchanged for other things 
 is capable of contributing to production in the same degree. If 
 this language be not wholly ambiguous, it sets forth that money, 
 when exchanged for other things, then and only then becomes ar* 
 agent in production ; and that anything susceptible of exchange is, 
 from that very fact, exalted to the rank of a productive agent. 
 Now, money, in a high degree, is susceptible of exchange, and must 
 therefore be included in the latter statement. There are thousands 
 of products on which you may cast your eye every day as you pass 
 the shop windows, which could not by any stretch of fancy fiq 
 
 5 
 
 .nJvm 
 
 4 
 
 
3 
 
 considered as productive agents; and yet they are all susceptible 
 ot buiug exchanged, else they would not be exposed for sale. The 
 usefulness of the tools to the workman does not consist in the fact 
 that they may be sold for money, or exchanged for other things 
 but that thev are properly fashioned and litly made by industrious 
 hands to aid these hands in continued production. f ihink it is 
 quite evident that there has been a notion floating in our author’s 
 mind—some indefinable idea, something intangible which he calls 
 capital, and which he proclaims as superior to and independent of 
 money tools, and materials. He does not tell us what it is. It may be 
 a myth : and we fear that thousands of good people, who think they 
 know all about the matter, are in the same position with regard to 
 tins myth It is not industry. It is no product of labor. It was 
 never seen oy mortal eyes, and yet men everywhere stand in awe 
 ot it. 1 hey would not dare to utter a word or pen a sentence to 
 prejudice or discredit the existence of this ghostly shadow which 
 flits around every mart, which casts its mysterious influence over 
 every Exchange, and which, like others of its kind insensible to 
 either lead or logic, fills us all with some indefinable sort of fear 
 and robs us of our very manhood. That Mr. Mill had some such 
 idea in his mind is evident from his own words. What capital does 
 - for production, he says, is to afford the shelter, protection, tools 
 and materials, which the work re quires, and to feed and otherwise 
 maintain the laborers during the process. If words have any 
 meaning what does all this imply but that there is some¬ 
 thing which is called capital, something over and abo*e in¬ 
 dustry, which furnishes shelter, houses, factories, etc; not the 
 tools and materials themselves, or the industry which pro- 
 educes them, but something else which “affords” or furnishes the 
 .tool and materials; not the food and other means of maintenance 
 Mor our bodily frames, but something outside of labor which feeds 
 clothes, and maintains these frames. Can it be money itself to 
 .which lie has reference? I can hardly say. His language on that 
 Hiead is that money is not synonymous with capital. And yet in 
 other parts of bis writings, he leaves one under the full conviction 
 j that he fell into the error of attributing to money the power of 
 ^feeding, clothing, and maintaining industry. 
 
 \ Mr. Mill seems to have taken all the good things which industry can 
 “produce, and, placing them in t he laboratory of his mind, or rather 
 16 . cruc ^ e °* imagination, immediately there is separated 
 Nsmnething without form and void ; having neither body nor parts * 
 ^acknowledging to neither length, breadth, nor height; giving not 
 ^the slightest evidence that it has ever been touched by the hand of 
 >3abor : and forthwith we are commanded to bow down and cry 
 ^This be thy God, O Industry ! Is there a man, with a spark of 
 .intelligence, to obey such a summons? 
 
 » It is no trifling or light matter which now engages our attention, 
 ^vlhe subject is of such momentous and far reaching importance 
 V^’-'d leads us away down into the midst of a world of such misery’ 
 Avretchedness, and unrequited toil, that we may well be excused if 
 jwe bring before the reader another extract from Mr. Mill. 
 
 . “Suppose, for instance, that the capitalist is a hardware manu¬ 
 facturer, and that his stock in trade, over and above his machinery 
 ^consists at present wholly in iron goods. Iron goods cannot feed 
 ^laborers. Nevertheless, by a mere change of the destination of 
 ^tbese iron goods, he can cause laborers to be fed. Suppose that 
 
 
 
4 
 
 with a portion of the proceeds he intended to maintain a pack of 
 hounds, or an establishment of servants ; and that he changes his 
 intention, and employs it in his business, paying it in wages to ad¬ 
 ditional work people These work people are enabled to buy and 
 consume the food which would otherwise have been consumed by 
 the hounds or by the servants; and thus without the employer’s 
 having seen or touched one particle of the food, his conduct has 
 determined that so much more of the food existing in the country 
 has been devoted to the use of productive laborers, and so much 
 less consumed in a manner wholly unproductive.” 
 
 Now, if this be not a deliberate shutting of one’s eyes and run¬ 
 ning full tilt against the impregnable walls of political economy, 
 
 I do not know what is. It is not simply a mistake, an error—it is a 
 thorough subversion of the method and order of political economy ; 
 an attempt to blot out industry itself from its position as the great 
 factor in the world’s production. It is not by a change in the des¬ 
 tination of iron goods, or of any other goods, that a capitalist can 
 cause laborers to be fed. It is not by paying wages to work people 
 that workers are enabled to buy and consume the food which 
 would otherwise be consumed by hounds and servants. It is not 
 the “ conduct ” of the capitalist which has determined that so much 
 more of the existing food has been devoted to the use of productive 
 industry. The truth is, the bits of money paid by the capitalist are 
 powerless in the case. The power is wholly on the other side. 
 The production is entirely with the laborers. ' They do not use the 
 capitalist’s money; neither do they eat the capitalist’s food. It is 
 their own money they spend—it is their own food they consume. 
 If the capitalist places tools in their hands, he takes good care that 
 the workmen pay for their use through either of the only two pos¬ 
 sible channels—reduction of wages, or enhanced price of the things 
 made. Wages are always paid in money, and the workmen have 
 given full value for that money. The capitalist hands over to 
 them certain little coins upon which he bestows no toil from the 
 moment they come into his possession till the moment they leave— 
 the workingmen hand over to him the substantial evidence of a 
 full week’s personal toil and exhaustion. Whatever doubts may 
 arise in the mind as to the earnings and toil of the capitalist, and 
 as to the legitimacy of his great rewards, of one thing we may be 
 certain—the men leave behind them, at the week’s end, full and 
 substantial value for the pittance they carry to their homes. At 
 the same time I may be permitted to say that I am just as certain 
 the noble mind of John Stuart Mill did not fully realise what was 
 written when his pen traced the lines which I have transferred to 
 these pages ; and which, unhappily, are not by any means fitted to 
 restore the beautiful temple of industry, so long laid in ruins. 
 
 All attempts thus to frame the system of political economy, or 
 any of its great principles, on the life or death of a pack of hounds, 
 or of a lot of domestic servants, or of a number of half-starved 
 laborers, must, in the end, only expose our system, if not ourselves, 
 to the ridicule of critical and intelligent men. 
 
 Industry is anterior to capital, and must, in the nature of things, 
 be continually anterior to it, seeing that it is a principle (now 
 happily being recognised more and more) that there is no value 
 without labor. The savage who first fashioned a bow and arrow 
 or hollowed out a canoe, illustrated the truth of this principle. It 
 must ever be so. The fact that industry has gradually framed an 
 
immense quantity of tools and other good and serviceable material, 
 will never subvert the natural order of things. Were the proposi¬ 
 tion or theorem of Mr. Mill true, that industry is limited by capital, 
 then there never would have been any capital. To say that indus¬ 
 try is limited by the very things it fashions is manifestly absurd. 
 If any philosophic statement is really necessary on the subject, I 
 would reverse the theorem of Mr. Mill and say that capital is limited 
 by industry —that whatever is yielded or has been yielded by indus¬ 
 try may be assumed as having had its limits clearly defined by in¬ 
 dustry itself. When a man is toiling up a mountain, and a friend 
 in passing gives him a lift to its summit in his waggon, on condi¬ 
 tion, we will say, that he drives and guides the horse ; no one 
 would allege that the journey had been limited, when it had been 
 actually aided, by the horse and waggon. If to produce merchan¬ 
 dise be the goal of life, as the top of the mountain was the goal of 
 the journey, then capital, as I understand it, aids industry towards 
 that goal. The power of physical endurance indeed presents a 
 limit to industrial effort. Increasingage and feebleness will gradu¬ 
 ally impose a limit to effective force. Although it may be said, 
 and said truly, that the fishes and wild animals and berries which 
 sustain savage life are in a certain sense anterior to industry; yet 
 it is also true that, as an industrial question, the labor necessary 
 to secure them is anterior to the produce—the labor is first exerted, 
 then the results appear. Those who hold that industry is limited 
 by capital do not mean to set forth the simple truism that every 
 created thing necessarily has its limits. They mean to propound 
 something very different from that—indeed, so far as labor is con¬ 
 cerned, a most dangerous and destructive heresy. To say that 
 industry is limited by capital, in the sense in which the economists 
 use the phrase, is to say that the parent is the offspring of the 
 child; that capital is the master and man the slave; that dead inert 
 matter rules and reigns; and that intelligent and strong-limbed 
 men must implicitly obey. In short, it is to put the dead in the 
 place of the living ; to take from industry its birthright, its blossom, 
 and its crown. 
 
 Another of Mr. Mill’s fundamental propositions regarding capital 
 is, that it is the result of saving. This, he says, is the source, or 
 relates to the source, from which it is derived. “ We may say tnat 
 all capital, and especially all addition to capital, are the result of 
 saving.” After what I have already stated, I think few, if any, of 
 my readers will feel inclined to pin their faith to so foolish a pro¬ 
 position. But seeing that it has been elevated to the rank of an 
 axiomatic truth in economic science, we do not wonder that this hast 
 further been set forth, with all due solemnity, — a sort of twin bro¬ 
 ther,—that, when industry abstains f rom using its productions, then 
 it is on the highroad to prosperity,—a statement diametrically op¬ 
 posed to truth. It seems to me very strange that Mr. Mill should" 
 apparently have been so anxious to divert the mind away from the 
 only true source of production, labor. By what sort of arguments 
 does Mr. Mill seek to establish his proposition? By such as these: 
 that, were all persons to spend all they produce, capital could not 
 increase ; that farmers, even in the simplest states of society, must 
 save a little for seed over and above their personal consumption; 
 that all that any one employs in carrying on labor other than his 
 own must have been originally brought together by saving; that, 
 in a certain state of society, the increase of capital has usually been 
 
6 
 
 derived from privations which, though not generally called by that 
 name, are essentially the same with savings; and so forth. Some 
 of these are plain and simple truisms, and have little or no relation 
 to economic science. Not one of them bears out the proposition 
 that capital is produced or increased by saving. In fact, industrv 
 not only produces the capital, but cares for it afterwards, keeps it 
 in repair, and thus “ saves” it for use. Nobody will dispute the 
 fact that, if a factory or piece of machinery is not burned up or 
 otherwise destroyed, it will be found standing in its place ready 
 for its work ; in fact “ saved;” just as nobody will dispute the fact 
 that a horse is a horse and a cart is a cart, or that you cannot both 
 eat and have your cake. Mr. Mill seems to think that all persons 
 can spend all they produce, and that, in such a case, capital will 
 not increase. All persons could not spend, in the sense in which 
 Mr. Mill applies the term—that is that there should soon be nothing 
 left for anybody—even in “ personal indulgences” all they produce. 
 The thing is impossible. But most producers part with all they 
 produce in exchange for equivalents. It is incorrect to say that 
 “all that any one employs in carrying on labor, other than his own, 
 must have been originally brought together by saving.” It was 
 originally brought together by purchase or by labor. The man 
 who has it, got it originally by exchanging for it his labor or the 
 fruits of his labor, else he should not have it at all. Here is just an 
 example of that “ incautious language ” which not only leads so 
 many readers astray, but brings into reproach a science which 
 presents before the enquiring mind a field of investigation not 
 surpassed in interest by any department of thought. 
 
 Over against all these statements I place the simple economic 
 truth which a child may understand—that industry Is the “source” 
 of capital, and capital the “Jresult” of industry. 
 
 But Mr. Mill could not shut his eyes to the obvious fact that every 
 thing produced by mortal hands gradually decays and disappears ; 
 that “ dust to dust” is written over both man and his works. He 
 therefore advances another theorem, that though capital is saved, it 
 is nevertheless consumed. To save it for yourself you must, he 
 says, have it consumed by some other person, not by yourself. Are 
 we, then, to believe absolute impossibilities? If laid by for future 
 use, he urges, it is not saved, it is then only hoarded. Why there 
 should be any real distinction of this kind between the flour I sell 
 to a laboring man to be immediately consumed by himself and 
 family, and the flour I keep past me and consume in say three or 
 six months hence, is a species of economic legerdemain I cannot 
 comprehend. What is there involved that should cause the one 
 transaction to be spoken of approvingly, the other in terms of 
 reprobation ? Mr. Mill makes a vast deal out of what he"calls the 
 unproductive consumption of the good things of this life, such as 
 wines, equipages, and fine furniture. He speaks of them being 
 “ destroyed ” by being consumed, so as to lead one to infer that 
 the} r are as effectually put out of existence as if some stout fellows, 
 club in hand, had smashed them to pieces, bottles, equipages, and 
 all. The thing is too preposterous to bear investigation. Is one 
 man to be reviled because he makes for himself a handsome turn¬ 
 out — even though it be a four-in-hand, livery, cocked hats and 
 all—and another to be praised because he is content with a creaking 
 old cart? Is one man to be reproved because he grows a field of 
 grapes, and turns out some puncheous of generous wine ; the other 
 
to be praised because he aspires no higher than a draught of good 
 cider, or mayhap is content with a glass of milk from his cow ? Is 
 one man to be railed at because he makes for himself by his labor, 
 or purchases for himself by the produce of his labor, a set of nice, 
 polished, and comfortable furniture; and another praised because 
 he is content to lie on a rough plank ? There is no “ destruction ” 
 in either case. The very object for which all labor is undertaken, 
 personal satisfaction, has been equally attained in each of the cases 
 supposed. To say that it would be better to have the labor which 
 is expendecTin the production of all these good things diverted into 
 some other channel, such as the production of more tools for the 
 workmen, or capital so called; or to say, as Mr. Mill says, that 
 society collectively is poorer by the amount expended in these 
 things, is to say what is manifestly untrue. It would be to sweep 
 away much that makes life pleasant and enjoyable ; much that 
 tends to the advancement and refinement of society. Setting 
 morals aside, and looking at it only from an economic point of 
 view, I could not have a word to say against the man who spends 
 ten thousand a year on hunters, hounds and racers, so long as he 
 expends the produce of his own labor. An economist whose recent 
 death we all mourn held that abstract political economy is 
 susceptible of reduction to a single equation—in the same way as 
 Lagrange reduced abstract mechanics—the fundamental idea of 
 which is, that every person seeks to employ his productive powers 
 in the way which will yield him most. Whilst questioning the' 
 propriety of attempting such a reduction of this noble science, we 
 may yet accept of the statement so far as it goes, or so far as it is 
 related to production. And so it stands out in bold antagonism to 
 the proposition of Mr. Mill. The position held by the economists, 
 that u had men always consumed their produce in the gratification 
 of their immediate wants and desires, there would be no such 
 thing as capital at all”* is so startling that one can scarcely 
 believe it to have been advanced in sober earnest. There is not 
 the least truth in it. It subverts the very order of nature. Itputs 
 aside, as of no moment, the very end and aim of all industrial effort. 
 It is to gratify their wants ahd desires that men work and consume 
 the produce of their work. Men do not eat up their ploughs and 
 spades and harrows; they do not swallow their steam engines and 
 their ships ; but they clothe and feed themselves generally as well 
 as they can, and they love to decorate their homes. The reverse 
 of the statement of the economists is the truth. If men had net 
 always consumed their produce in the gratification of their wants 
 and desires, no such thing as capital would ever have existed; and 
 they would all soon have descended to the position of miserable 
 starvlings. It is the steady production of all that is good, and the 
 no less steady consumption of these good things which go, if men 
 would but live and lei live, to clothe industry with its pro¬ 
 ductive powers, and to yield it to those satisfactions after which 
 it constantly strives. 
 
 How is it possible, as Mr. Mill alleges, to save your products for 
 yourself by having them consumed by some other person? The 
 products are gone when they are consumed. Those who have con¬ 
 sumed them have purchased them. They have but put an equiva¬ 
 lent in their place. The original producer or owner has got an 
 equivalent for them, something else in exchange, that is all. Is it 
 
 *Ency. Brit. 8th Ed. Art. I*ol . conomy. 
 
8 
 
 not a fact worthy of most attentive consideration, that the econo¬ 
 mists, in their desperate efforts to build up the present system, have 
 been compelled to drag to ruins every vital principle in political 
 economy, exchange among the rest? 
 
 Mr. Mill has a fourth fundamental proposition respecting capital, 
 namely, that it supports and employs productive labor. This 
 theorem must embrace money itself, for he speaks of capital “ or 
 other funds ” devoted to the sustenance of labor. As I do not wish 
 to weary the reader, and as what I have yet to say will bear upon 
 the point, I feel as if the best answer I can give at the moment to 
 this proposition is, that, in the sense in which it is advanced by 
 Mr. Mill, it is not true. 
 
 Here I part company with Mr. Mill, for how can two walk to¬ 
 gether except they be agreed ; and it is far from a pleasant task 
 thus to have to criticise one whose writings have, in many respects, 
 done so much for the science of political economy. Ana yet, not¬ 
 withstanding all the influence of his great name, much of what he 
 laid down as fundamental principle must eventually disappear in 
 presence of calm and sober reflection. For it is quite plain to me 
 that Mr. Mill, like many before him, and like some others since, 
 frequently though unconsciously suffered the powers of his great 
 mind to be overborne by the vulgar, arrogant, and commonplace 
 maxims of the commercial world. He is not alone in having taken 
 up ideas, those regarding capital, so called, which go far to vitiate 
 much of what he and others have written on the subject. I have 
 in the course of my reading become more and more impressed with 
 the necessity of watching like jealous sentinels at the very portals 
 of our science, for once an error creeps in there is no saying whither 
 it may lead. Well would it have been for us, humanly speaking, 
 had the “ little ones ” of the daughter of Babylon been taken in their 
 infancy and dashed against the stones. A vulgar error in political 
 economy, as in Scripture interpretation, only needs to be sent forth 
 with the endorsation of a great name, and forthwith a crowd of 
 lesser mortals join the cry, and centuries may pass away ere it is 
 run to earth. What would my readers think of me were I to parade 
 before them the naked savages of New Guinea as samples of 
 civilization and Christianity ? Or were I to enter a lunatic asylum, 
 and shutting my eyes and ears to the outer world, proceed to rea¬ 
 son as if what I witnessed there were a fair representation of hu¬ 
 man life and society? Would that be anything more absurd than 
 to accept of the ignorant, degraded, hand to mouth multitudes, strug¬ 
 gling all day long for their daily bread, and retiring at night like 
 the beasts of the held to their miserable lairs, as the true and legiti¬ 
 mate fruits of the workings out of industrial and economic science? 
 And yet it is reasoning from just such data that has led numerous 
 economists to fall into such errors and absurdities as these : to exalt 
 money at the expense of labor—to view it as practically a produc¬ 
 tive agent—to invent the myth of the wages fund—to claim separate 
 and distinct rewards for the tools and appliances of labor—to set 
 money, true money, aside—to give the name of money to bits of 
 paper, and thus to make the very acknowledgment of debt to in¬ 
 dustry a means of payment, so called, of its just demand—to set forth 
 that “credit,” or the getting of the proceeds of labor into one’s 
 hands without payment, is actually a blessing to industry—to fall 
 into the perilous sort of security which accepts of what we see 
 around us as the natural and inevitable condition of things—to 
 
§ 
 
 exercise, by sprinkling a few gold pieces around the base of th6 
 mighty mountain of paper, the heinous and constant deception of 
 what is facetiously called “the specie'basis” (that “cunningly devised 
 fable 7 ’ which has led such multitudes astray)—to perpetuate, under 
 the pretence of paying by paper promises to pay, a universal sus¬ 
 pension of payment, thus convicting us as a nation of being, like 
 the Cretians of old, “always liars”—and to say and do many other 
 things at which reason and morality alike revolt. In a word, the 
 economists have labored hard and brought forth, not a mouse, but 
 a monster. 
 
 I will now advance two distinct propositions or theorems on the 
 subject of Capital, and then proceed to lay down a few principles 
 in political economy, which, though they may be new to most if 
 not all of my readers, in my judgment throw so clear a light over 
 the whole field of Capital as, I trust, will induce those who love 
 truth for truth’s sake to follow up the very interesting subject for 
 themselves. 
 
 1st. Capital, as such, cannot receive any reward from Industry. 
 
 2nd. Industry, as a productive agent , cannot afford any return to 
 Capital. 
 
 Each of these theorems is the corollary of the other. If one is 
 true, both are true. And if both are true, then it follows that 
 there never was and never can be an equitable or other division of 
 profits between labor and capital, between industry and the things 
 wjiich it produces. In that case, if capital be divorced from the 
 producer, there cannot but be unceasing conflict between the two. 
 
 There is no such thing in nature, and therefore no such thing in 
 political economy, as demand for labor. What is there to demand 
 it? Is there anything outside of labor itself to demand it? Do 
 men work for others or for themselves ? Can money demand 
 labor? Money is simply a product of industry, in general and 
 gratuitous use by industry in the exchange of its products. It is 
 produced by industry, is emphatically for industry , and surely 
 must be owned b} r industry. It is designed for circulation 
 throughout all the fields of labor, so that wherever a product ot 
 labor is found, there also will be found or ought to be found, an¬ 
 other product of labor, money, with which to buy. In its universal 
 and gratuitous use to industry, money may be said to be its very 
 slave. It is where it should be when it is in the hand of industry; 
 for the absolute title which labor gives to the products of its own 
 toil can never be destroyed. Would there be any reason in calling 
 such a thing as this, or calling buying with such a thing as this, a 
 demand for industry? A series of buyings, on the part of the 
 capitalist, from the raw material all through up to the finished 
 product, is not production, for buying a thing or selling a thing is 
 not producing it. It is simply an exchange of money for the pro¬ 
 ducts of labor, and the buyer, as such, is never the producer. You 
 may please to call this continued series of purchases investing , 
 but there is no production in it at all, not even to the extent of the 
 most slender thread. Labor can only sell its products. For these 
 there is a demand ; and of these there is a suppty. If you buy a 
 human being from some one who claims to own him, and set him 
 to work for you, you will have a slave in your possession. He 
 never owns property, the produce of his toil. You simply keep 
 him in life for the sake of what his labor will yield, by giving him 
 a bare sustenance out of the things he produces ; but it is impossi- 
 
10 
 
 ble be can ever rise above the position of a slave. And yet, as 
 you must well know, it is his labor which keeps you in life. If a 
 system prevails by which the generality of men receive only 
 days wages, and never own the things they produce, their position 
 will practically be similar to that of the slave. They will get the 
 bare necessaries of life, nothing more. A home, a dwelling, with 
 all its pleasant surroundings, they will rarely if ever own. They 
 will remain strangers to all elevating and refining influences. 
 They will see all the good things they create—the good -houses, the 
 good clothing, the good food, the good equipages, the good fur¬ 
 nishings of all kinds—continually passing away, as if by some 
 inevitable law, out of the hands of the many into the hands of the 
 few, out of the hands of the producers into those of the non-pro¬ 
 ducers. The stately steamships which they build will rarely carry 
 them across the ocean on a visit of pleasure, or of recreation for 
 their wearied frames. Is not this the very condition in which we now 
 
 I find the industrial world? 
 
 ' It is impossible, under our present system, that it can be other¬ 
 wise. It is a provision in economic science that the human race is 
 to be greatly advanced in culture, condition, and refinement, by the 
 universal exchange of the products of every land, and b} r the pro¬ 
 fits realized in such exchange. If the whole earth had been of the 
 same temperature and yielded the same products, there would have 
 been but little occasion for different nations to seek each other out 
 in order to exchange their various commodities. The diversity of 
 climate, surface, and natural products, sustains foreign trade, and 
 vastly increases the intercourse between nations. Now, men ex¬ 
 change their products with each other in order that they may 
 secure a profit by the exchange. If there were no profit, there 
 would be no exchange. But what is this profit? Men like to 
 make as much of it as they can, but how few of them ever con¬ 
 sider what it really is. I think the best definition 1 can give of it is, 
 that it is labor saved. It is not a definition cumbered with words, 
 but it tells the whole story. To save labor, we must labor. Men 
 exchange the products of their toil for other products of toil, 
 because they see that they can save their labor by so doing—they 
 find it cheaper to exchange than that they should themselves 
 make the things they are in quest of. Thus we are compelled to 
 throw our skill and energy into one channel, and in that particular 
 channel or branch of industry we naturally become proficient. 
 This definition, so simple, brings before us at a glance the prolific 
 source of all those vast emoluments which are represented by the 
 general term 11 income ” ; all of it the fruit of industry; all of it the 
 wealth of labor. Of course the true profit in every case is secured 
 when the two products are exchanged at their true value—that is, 
 at the value of the actual labor embodied in each, reckoned in but 
 never arbitrarily measured by that article of universal use and 
 desire which is taken from the mine ; and which, though it be 
 called a medium of exchange, yet exchanges nothing but the labor 
 value it contains. It is evident, also, that this profit or saving of 
 labor is a most powerful and important factor, though silent and 
 unseen, in the progress of our race, bestowing upon us vast re¬ 
 sources beyond all computation. And thus also we see how it 
 comes round that the products of industrial skill and effort flow 
 into the very channel—that of exchange—through which these 
 beneficent forces are brought into full and best play. 
 
11 
 
 Now, so far as the products of manual or muscular labor are 
 concerned, it is obvious that the profit should fall to the lot of those 
 who have actually embodied their personal toil in the making or 
 necessary handling of the commodity to be exchanged. Wherever 
 needful actual labor is given, there profit should accrue. 
 
 Mr. Mill has, I think, entirely missed the point in his definition of 
 profit. He is not alone, however, in this respect. He says, “ the 
 cause of profit is, that labor produces more than is required for its 
 support.” Now, this cannot be true, however well it fits in with the 
 ideas of capital. Labor does not produce more than is required for 
 its support. What object would it have in doing so? A shoe¬ 
 maker makes more shoes than he can himself wear out, but that 
 fact is not the cause of his profit. He makes more shoes than 
 he can consume, but he needs other things in exchange for the shoes. 
 How could industry make profit out of useless surplus which would 
 have to lie and rot ? It is as striking as it is instructive to see 
 with what regularity all the great staples of life are produced and 
 consumed, consumption following as closely on the heels of pro¬ 
 duction as night follows day. Even the luxuries of life are all 
 called for and consumed, else they would not be produced. Has 
 half famished industry, as we daily witness it around us, more than 
 it needs for its support? Would it not be glad to have a great 
 deal more of even the necessaries of life, let alone its comforts and 
 luxuries? The truth is, my definition of profit is too simple for the 
 economists. Simple and truthful though it be, it plays sad havoc 
 with a multitude of fine but baseless economic theories. 
 
 If these principles be correct, it becomes a question of gravest im¬ 
 portance how or to what|extent the laboring population, our working 
 hired millions, can possibly receive profit on their labor. They make 
 nearly everything that is produced. All the labor value that these 
 things contain flows from their hands. But do they ever own the 
 things they make? or do they ever exchange them ? The ownership 
 falls immediately into the hands of parties who have not labored and 
 produced, and by them they are exchanged. And if it be needful, as it 
 seems to mebeyond all doubt it is, that the laborer or producer should 
 personally own the things he makes in order to secure the lawful 
 profit by their exchange ; and if, as is the fact, the w< rkers never own, 
 these things ; then it follows that the millions of actual producers are 
 inevitably shut out from all profit on their labor. This great source of 
 elevation and progress is practically closed against them. The wealth, 
 whatever it is, goes into another channel and falls into other hands. 
 Industry produces it and Loses it—capital claims it and gets it. Under 
 such a system the doom of the working classes is effectually sealed. 
 Though they produce the world’s wealth, they have, in the way of 
 reward, no part or lot in the matter. As a body it is impossible 
 they can ever rise above that low plane of existence on which, 
 from the cradle to the grave, they spend their unambitious, sad, 
 and hopeless lives. Hence also we perceive how it is that all the 
 vast resources, in the shape of machinery, now in the hands of in¬ 
 dustry, allied as these are with some of the most powerful forces of 
 nature, have failed appreciably to affect for the better the condition 
 of industry itself. Nations without values to exchange will either 
 remain in an uncivilized state or become extinct. Industry, in the 
 persons of its producers, never owning and exchanging the products 
 of its toil, is reduced to the position of a beast, of burden. Capital, 
 the product of industry, arid designed to be its best friend, thus 
 
12 
 
 becomes, in the hands of the non-producers, its most dreadful 
 oppressor, never halting even for a moment in its insatiable demands, 
 but ever crushing our poor humanity beneath that hopeless bondage 
 out of which death is the only escape. This is industry in ruins; 
 and industry in ruins is, without doubt, humanity itself hastening 
 rapidly to destruction. 
 
 But it may be urged that if the laborer gets $5.50 a week ; and it 
 only costs him $5 to live, he has gained 50 cents on his labor for 
 the week. This would not shew that he gained a profit out of the 
 things made. It would only disclose the fact that he had been able, 
 by extraordinary pinching, or denying himself some of the 
 necessaries of life, to keep his expenditure within his income by 50 
 cents. Notwithstanding all that may be urged as to the little 
 savings of a few of the more skilled hands, it is a notorious fact 
 that the great bulk of workers are constantly living on the edge of 
 poverty, and that the slightest stagnation soon brings them to 
 actual want. 
 
 Think, also, of the radical difference between selling the pro¬ 
 ducts of industry, and selling, as it is called, a day’s or week’s labor, 
 or labor separate from its products. Do men, in each case, meet 
 on equal terms? Far from it. In selling the products of industry 
 men do indeed meet on equal terms. If the thing is not wanted at 
 the moment, there is no pressing hurry. It can lie a while. Labor 
 is fairly matched with labor, service with service, value with value. 
 Butin the other case men meet on unequal terms. On the one side is 
 the gigantic power of capital, of accumulated wealth ; the factories, 
 the houses, the machinery, the tools, the means of transport, all in 
 the hands of non-producers—on the other helpless industry, wearied 
 and anxious, wasted, broken down, with suffering at the door : on 
 one side all earth’s goodly products to fall back upon, on the other 
 famished children it may be crying for bread. There could not be 
 a more unequal conflict. In the disposal of commodities there may 
 be a law of demand and supply, where each party brings with him 
 his own supply and his own demand, but here it would be a shame¬ 
 ful perversion of language to speak of any natural law of supply 
 and demand as existing at all. If commodities are not in demand, 
 they will simply cease to b* made. But it labor, in its present sad 
 condition, ceases to be “ employed,” as it is termed, it will cease 
 to live. The forces at work are different, as well as the objects on 
 which these forces are expended. On the one hand products of 
 industry matched against products of industry—on the other hand 
 all the products of industry arrayed against industry itself in the 
 persons of its producers ; in other words, against human beings. 
 
 Here we are brought face to face with the great question of hu¬ 
 man labor considered in the abstract, or as apart from the proceeds 
 of the toil of the active, intelligent and responsible being in whom 
 ,it is lodged. Dan it be sold as a commodity can be sold ? Have we 
 considered how closely man’s moral and material interests are linked 
 together ? Is it consistent with his dignity, independence, rights, 
 and progress, that he should sell his labor otherwise than through 
 the produce of his toil—that the great bulk of the world’s commo¬ 
 dities should never be owned by the people who toil for them—that 
 the man and the material produce of his hands should be brought 
 to the seme level ? It is a question of profoundest interest. I 
 have my own thoughts on the subject, but for the present I must 
 leave the problem in the hands of the reader. We know, at all 
 
13 
 
 events, what a wise man said on the subject long ago ,— 11 Also 
 that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his j 
 labor; it is the gift of God : there is nothing better than that a 
 man should rejoice in his own w r orks.” ' 
 
 It will help us much in our investigations if we bear in mind 
 that it is not the material of which products are made, but the la¬ 
 bor embodied in the product, which is sold. This truth comes too 
 seldom to ttie surface. We appropriate nature’s gifts—we sell only 
 men’s labor. From the richest and rarest of her products (the 
 diamond for example) down to the cheapest and commonest of 
 them all, the same truth prevails: it is labor only which can be 
 sold. I would invite the capitalist especially to take this great 
 truth in hand, and see whither it will lead him, and what it will do 
 with all that he so fondly calls his own. 
 
 It may be necessary to remind my mercantile readers that they 
 also must submit to the inevitable laws regulating value and ex¬ 
 change. Political econoihy has no special rules for them. They 
 can be paid on no other principle than that on which the laboring 
 man is paid. If they think that the mere touch of their fi igers, or 
 the mere act of purchase, separates in some mysterious manner a 
 large portion of the world’s wealth for their pockets, they are deep¬ 
 ly mistaken. They can claim for their labor ; for all they have got 
 to exchange; for all the value they add to commodities ; and for 
 no more. Can one expect to reap where he has not. sown ? The 
 broker who spends a few hours of each day rushing up and down 
 the street must account for his labor just the same as the farmer 
 who follows his plough. The laws of value and of the exchange 
 of values embrace each with the same firm grasp. Labor demands 
 at the hands of every man a service of some sort; and it must be 
 a true industrial service if it is to come within the circle of 
 exchange. Trade is but buying and selling. Exchange is the 
 appointed channel through which a profit comes to industry; and 
 though it cannot come unless an exchange is made, yet it does not 
 come simidy because the exchange is made, but because an ex¬ 
 change is effected of things in which certain parties have embodied 
 a determinate amount of labor value. If any one presumes to inter¬ 
 cept a portion, whether great or small, of that profit flowing to the 
 producer through this, nature’s own channel, he must, it is very 
 plain, be able, by a labor title and by no other, to establish his 
 claim to the share he appropriates, otherwise he will wrong labor 
 by taking that which does not belong to him , Commerce is not a 
 vast grab-bag into which a man may thrust his hand at pleasure. 
 Possession is not necessarily ownership. Broad lands do not be¬ 
 come yours because some marauding baron of old looked over them 
 from some distant height, and said to sundry of his followers : All 
 this will I give you if you will fall down and worship me. Property 
 got by fraud or violence must ever be a source of reproach and 
 shame; property got by values incorporated with it by other hands 
 can never be a cause for boasting; property accumulated as the 
 result or equivalent of personal toil must ever be a source of honor¬ 
 able pride and satisfaction. The eye of truth itself can discover 
 no flaw in the title conferred by an exchange of labor value for 
 labor value ; but it is a questionable sort of title which comes with 
 property whose price has been greatly depressed by the urgent ne¬ 
 cessities of the man whose toil it represents. Are there many com¬ 
 mercial transactions really able to pass through the ordeal of 
 
14 
 
 labor ? Have we much property in possession able to stand the 
 fiery trial, and to produce, on demand, labor’s grand and unim¬ 
 peachable title? 
 
 The next proposition which I have to make is one of great im¬ 
 portance with rehrence to the question of capital. It bears direct¬ 
 ly upon it, and, so tar ns it goes, presei ts an insuperable obstacle 
 to its claims. It is this— that m every act of exchange the profit is on 
 the side of the man with the labor , not on the side of the man with the 
 money. I have elseweie laid this down as a principle in political 
 economy, and given, with .-ome fulness, the argument in support of 
 it.* Money is an absolutely unpioduciive commodity. Labor is 
 finished with it from the moment it leaves the mint. Its general 
 service to the human family in helping barter or exchange, and 
 in placing in the hands of industry at all times absolute security 
 for ns work or for its goods, no arithmetical terms can fully em¬ 
 brace. But in its special work in the act of exchange between man 
 and man, it can bring back nothing to its holder except the labor 
 value embodied in the coins. Though we are in the habit of call¬ 
 ing it a medium of exchange, it exchanges nothing outside of itself. 
 Of course, if it did not circulate, men would not desire it. But it 
 does circulate, and it does own value ; and these are the reasons why 
 indus'ry accounts itself srfe in investing its labor in it for the 
 time being. Labor itself will permit no questionings on the 
 point; for it considers itself, and justly so, absolutely safe in such 
 an investment. With gold and silver in bandit not only feels secure, 
 but is secure, and in the midst of the wildest panic, is perfectly 
 serene. Nothing can equal a labor title, and gold and silver have 
 that title perfect. Labor knows it gave toil for its specie — 
 it knows the specie is always in demand—and with that in its 
 hand, it can laugh in the midst of the greatest commotion. But 
 profit on the bit of money, there is no .ie. That was all settled for 
 when it passed from the min Lor from the hand of the man who dug 
 it from the mine. Profit can only accrue when labor is spent; never 
 when money is spent. It may startle the reader to tell him so. 
 It is true nevertheless. And it is well that it is so; for industrial 
 prosperity for the world does not consist in the quantity of money 
 m existence, nor in the accumulation of money in particular hands, 
 but in the quantity of good things produced by labor, and distribut¬ 
 ed wherever other labor establishes its claim to a share. I need 
 hardly pause to point out how or to what extent this important 
 economic truth bears on the subject of capital and its claims. The 
 reader may intuitively make the application. Fixed and circulat¬ 
 ing capital are the two divisions generally made of the subject by 
 the economists. Money is consequenily held by them to be capital, 
 and entitled to rewards. But if the principle I have laid down be 
 correct, it can receive no return from industry; and there is surely 
 no other conceivable source from which it can be supplied. And 
 then, let it be borne in mind, the laborers are always paid their 
 wages in money, or in what pretends to be money. It needs no 
 argument to shew that the worker gives toil, and that tbe man 
 who gives a bit of money, gives an article on which he has be¬ 
 stowed no toil. If he claims a profit because he has given a bit of 
 money in exchange for labor, as all capitalists do, he claims what 
 labor can never give without most serious loss and suffering. 
 
 * New Catechism on Political Economy, p 35. 
 
15 
 
 Money, instead of being a blessing to industry, will then be turned 
 into an instrument of oppression. In exchanging a pair of boots 
 for a pair of pants, the tailor and the shoemaker each receives his 
 full labor back again, and a profit besides, because each has 
 brought skilled and effective labor to bear on the things made, 
 and labor is mutually saved by the exchange. The skill of the tai¬ 
 lor is transferred to the shoemaker, and the skill of the shoemaker 
 becomes the property of the tailor. But in exchanging the boots for 
 a five-dollar piece, the owner of the money can claim no profit, 
 because he bestows no labor, skilled or otherwise, on the 
 piece. Where he has given no labor, it is certain he can claim 
 nothing for labor saved. Hence money conveys a profit to the pro¬ 
 ducer for the things he makes and exchanges, but can never impart 
 profit to the person who simply pays it away. When that producer 
 comes, in his turn, to part with the money, he parts with it without 
 a profit. 
 
 It is plain, then, that if the Capitalists, or anybody else, claim a 
 profit on the mere exchange of money, of this so-called circulating 
 capital, they claim what labor, at any rate, never can afford to 
 give. 
 
 It may not be out of place to consider, in passing, what really 
 constitutes the capital of the Bank of England. It is made up of 
 three things: specie, paper, and credit. As related to industry, 
 the first is real, the second valueless, the third a myth. It may 
 have some other things in possession, such as bills discounted, or, 
 in other words, vast claims against the commercial and manufac¬ 
 turing classes, and which the industrial classes are constantly in 
 the act of paying out of their hard toil. But the three things 
 mentioned are those by which it principally does its work. The 
 specie has been all produced by the hand of toil. It has been got 
 by much labor. It is the property of industry. It ought to be in 
 the hand of industry, busy exchanging the products of industry. 
 It could not be more out of its place than stowed away in a bank 
 vault. The Bank of England never gave a bit of genuine labor 
 for a single sovereign or bar within its vaults. I do not say that it 
 has been gathered in there out of the hand of industry for the 
 known purpose of destroying industry; but I say that the effect of 
 its being so gathered is to destroy industry. The next thing is the 
 bit of paper, nicely engraved, promising to pay industry its money 
 on demand. As related to industry, that bit of paper must not 
 only be valueless, but ruinous; for, so long as it floats, it suspends 
 payment, draws vast returns out of labor, and thus uses the capital 
 of labor to ruin labor. It, is absolutely impossible that you can 
 ever hand to me a bit of paper in exchange for my labor, without 
 you making a gratitious use of my toil for the time being. 
 It is generally held up as an honorable and creditable thing 
 for the Bank of England to pay specie on demand. Why 
 should it be so considered? The money does not belong 
 to the bank—it belongs to industry. Trace it back to the 
 man who produced it; or trace it down from that man till it was 
 intercepted by a bit of paper. Is there anything creditable in the 
 Bank paying back to the man of labor the gold which belongs to 
 him, and which the other has originally got out of his hands in 
 exchange for a bit of paper? Is this all that can be said in favor 
 of specie payments, or of a return to specie payments—a question 
 which is at this moment convulsing this western continent? Is it 
 
16 
 
 such work as this that wc are satisfied to call creditable and honor¬ 
 able ? Has industry any real interest in such a question? Not one 
 whit. Paper men may worry themselves to death over the subject, 
 but w r bat interest has the great world of industry, the toiling 
 millions, with the question of specie payments, so called'? Will it 
 be better paid by one sort of nicely engraved paper being substi¬ 
 tuted for some other sort? Will it be paid any better by a bit of 
 paper called a promise to pay than by a bit of paper called a 
 legal tender in payment? What difference will it make to toil? 
 That is the question at issue. Then there is the thing called 
 credit, a myth so far as industry is concerned in its production or 
 handling, but, alas! not a myth so far as industry suffers by its 
 exactions. It is a fine word, a most honorable word, a most 
 plausible word. Did industry ever produce it, or handle it, or see 
 it? Industry says: Your credit is said to be good, when you can 
 get much, very much, of our money and goods into your possession 
 without payment; and you make us constantly pay tribute for the 
 exercise of your credit. Who is it, think you, that pays the vast 
 sums on account of this credit? It is all paid by the men who 
 toil, and by none else. The statesman thinks the strength of the 
 British nation lies at the back of the Bank of England. I pity his 
 delusion. Alas! the weakness of the British nation is in the Bank 
 of England. The violated laws of political economy are the 
 terrible things with which that nation has yet to deal. 
 
 The rudest implement ever fashioned by savage bauds, to aid in 
 moving the soil, was a step in the creation of capital. It relieved, 
 so to say, from the necessity of scratching the ground with the 
 fingers for the reception of the seed. It was a veritable production 
 of capital, and in that respect not different from the construction 
 of the most complicated and skilfully prepared piece of machinerju 
 The savage into whose brain there first flashed the idea of making 
 a hoe, and who first fashioned and employed such an implement, 
 would at once be placed in a position superior to his fellows. Until 
 similar hoes were made throughout the community, his rewards of 
 toil would be in excess of those of his companions. To make him 
 a live capitalist, it would only require some sort of paternal gov¬ 
 ernment (such as we are blessed with in these days) to take into 
 its head that the best way to promote the general prosperity of its 
 subjects is to create monopolies for particular branches of industry, 
 to invent a patent law, and thus deny to all the other members 
 of the tribe the privilege of making hoes. But the inventive facul¬ 
 ties of industry, once aroused, can never sleep more ; and so another 
 step forward is taken. A spade, or something after the model of a 
 spade, is fashioned ; and this relieves from the necessity of scratching 
 the soil with the hoe. A third step is taken; and some Tubal-Cain not 
 only sends forth the plough, but instructs other artificers to do the 
 same. According to the definition of the economists, these three 
 well known and ancient implements of husbandry are entitled to 
 be ranked among capital. Indeed, when we consider how much 
 the human race from the earliest ages has been indebted to the 
 plough for its very sustenance, and how widely that instrument 
 is distributed throughout every nation, may we not conclude that, 
 as a labor-saving instrument, it takes precedence of all others ever 
 made, or likely to be made, and stands in the front rank of 
 capital. 
 
 There is thus not the slightest difficulty in comprehending how 
 
17 
 
 capital is created, and how it is at once the produce and the pro¬ 
 perty of toil. It is simply ail aid to industry, and so far must be 
 considered as the tools and appliances with which further pro¬ 
 duction is to be accomplished ; and, in this respect, if we are very 
 fastidious about the matter, as embracing also all that shelters, 
 clothes, and feeds industry. ’** * • 
 
 The important question now comes bfcfpr# I»m,<hat manner 
 and to what extent can capital itself vf cei$4 r£\ya*yds frotn industry ? 
 
 Tbe capitalist says that he is entitled ’to’receive ^^etarji f£om 
 industry for the employment or use pf icapi f a,l: J Vay ihat^i^du^try- 
 can never afford to give a returrfctc* efy&tktr ; t , * »'***' 
 
 The capitalist says that the etapj§yfh4nt>>’ of his capital in the 
 hands of industry, and the reception of distinct, and* separate 
 reward for himself as the owner of tiia^ £§.p>fct&{, to 
 
 induslry: I say that the employment of ,eapi’ta3 by industry, in its 
 own hand3, and for its own behoof, is' a blessing ; but that the 
 giving of a distinct and separate reward to capital is a curse 
 instead of a blessing to industry, and can never generally be done 
 without industry being brought, as a direct consequence, to utter 
 degradation and slavery. 
 
 The capitalist says the profit can be divided between those who 
 do the work and those who own the machinery: I say that profits 
 can never be so divided without serious injury to industry. 
 
 The. capitalist says the profits may be doubled by the employment 
 of capital, so as to give one profit to the laborer and another to the 
 capitalist: I say that it is impossible for labor ever to get a double 
 profit out of the exchange of its products, and that every legitimate 
 exchange transaction yields on each side only a single profit. 
 
 The capitalist says it is better for him to “ give employment 7 ’ to f 
 thousands of laborers than to let them starve : I say it is better to j 
 do so, much better; better that men should work and earn even 
 wages than not to work and starve ; but that this is no argument at 
 all on behalf of the claims of capital, and does not throw the least 
 ray of light into our subject. 
 
 These propositions, as I have put them, are distinct and anti¬ 
 thetic. If one stands, the other falls : both cannot be true : either 
 industry or the capitalist must be relegated beyond the sphere of 
 political economy. 
 
 I think I need hardly say to the intelligent reader that the ques¬ 
 tion is not, Ought I to give the use of my capital without fee or 
 reward ? or, Ought the working men to make use of my capital and 
 give me no return? Happily, the economist is not called to adju¬ 
 dicate upon questions of that sort. What men may do or will do 
 belongs to another department of thought. Our duty is to expound 
 the principles of our science, and to show what indus f ry can do 
 and what it cannot do. 
 
 It seems necessary also, just at this point, to remind the reader, 
 that industry receives its rewards, or equivalents, from the produce 
 to which it gives birth. Out of that source alone can it be paid. 
 
 I suppose there can be no dispute with the capitalist on this point; 
 for I will admit, as the capitalist will also admit, that if capital is 
 entitled to a reward, it can be got out of no other source than the 
 produce of industry. The more ample things made by the use of 
 capital will bring in the more ample returns than if the tools in 
 aid of labor had never been fabricated. Simple and self-evident 
 though it be, it yet seems necessary to keep continually in mind 
 
18 
 
 that industry can only get its returns and its profits out of the 
 things produced by human hands, by industry itself; a truth which 
 the general use and circulation of money has no doubt helped 
 largely to hide from view. For the use of money, whilst it practi¬ 
 cally simplifies every transaction of exchange, to the careless or 
 superficial bteer.yer,appears as if it reduced the science to only 
 endless ;complir;^ions or a confusion of tongues which nobody 
 can understand. $either must we omit to estimate the powerful 
 influence exercise^ over many minds by that intangible and incor¬ 
 poreal tiiiuig cabled credit;, which, so long as it is only talked about 
 outside of inddsiry, is JjaHnl^ss enough; but which, the moment 
 it issues in getting hold of the products of industry, such as money 
 or anything “else, yrfchpui payment, and then adds to the price of 
 everything consumed by. the? producer, is a most hurtful and des¬ 
 tructive thing, my thioal, though it be. Credit, when it continually 
 keeps possession, without payment, of the products of industry, is 
 doing a mean thing: credit, when in addition it makes industry 
 actually pay for the use of its own product-?, is doing both a mean and 
 an unjust thing. 
 
 As is well known, it has been f )und somewhat difficult to give a 
 proper definition of the science of political economy—to restrain it ! 
 within proper bounds. Its infinite value to the human race seems ; 
 to mock all our efforts to confine it within scientific swaddling 
 bands. The true economist rejoices in its grand embrace, and will > 
 not trouble himself much about precise or positive lines of demar-l 
 cation. But define it as we may, it deals with human beings as the 
 producing agents to whose lot, and as a recompense for whose toil 
 and energy, all returns must finally, nay directly, fall. It never cun 
 be claimed that a spade as a spade, a plough as a plough, a thrash¬ 
 ing machine as a thrashing machine, or a marine engine as a marine 
 engine, are entitled to profit or reward. The profit must ever 
 accrue to the active and intelligent being who presides over all; of 
 whose inventive genius and skilful labor these are the products; 
 and without whose guiding hand and watchful presence and con¬ 
 stant co-operation, all the tools and machinery in existence would 
 be nothing but so much useless lumber. The capital itself can no 
 more claim a reward than can those active forces of nature which 
 the skill and ingenuity of man render obedient to his will. Capital 
 has no more claim to take anything out of the hand of industry, 
 than ihe sun has as a recompense for yielding its heat or the moon 
 its light. 
 
 It will help to throw further light upon the subject if we also 
 keep before us the interesting truth so clearly and logically set forth 
 by Mr. Mill—that man’s labor in its totality from first to last con-1 
 sists in nothing but moving things into position, or from place to| 
 place. Every turn of the spade, every stroke of the hammer or the 
 crush, every movement of the plough, every twist of the thread,every 
 sweep of the scythe, illustrates this simple truth. All that man can 
 do is to bring matter into its right position—nature does the rest. 
 He may think till he can think no more about his work; about 
 making a spade, about hammering a plough, about constructing a 
 bridge, about building a ship; his thinking must issue in a product 
 before he can be paid in a product. From the lowest to the highest 
 piece of mechanism, from the simplest up to the most complicated, 
 the same truth prevails. There is no exemption in favor of capital, 
 or of the use of capital. It is for this movement of the mortal 
 
19 
 
 frame, for the muscular force requisite—in other words, for the 
 expenditure of toil, or for the sweat of the brow—that men are and 
 ever must be paid. All physic il toil requires some mental toil, 
 some thought, more or less. If men are to be paid in a physical 
 product, such as money, the visible product must be the offspring 
 of physical toil, conceived in the mind, thought out there, and issuing 
 through the hand. The thing produced, as we say, by the hand, is 
 the fruit in every instance of the combined efforts of brain and mus¬ 
 cle, and must be accepted as payment in full for all that goes before—> 
 for all that brain and hand have jointly contributed towards the 
 product. There is a sweet and everlasting partnership between the? 
 band and the brain of every human being ; and the fruits of that part-| 
 nership are the endless things useful and beautiful which confer joy: 
 and comfort, refi lement and satisfaction, to society in general. The: 
 hand and the brain can no more be divorced than can the workman 
 and his tools. I admit that industry may be so degraded in ignor¬ 
 ance and so reduced by oppression, that brains may arrogate all 
 the wealth, comfort and profit, leaving only bare life to industry. 
 But this never can be done without the violation of natural laws 
 and of n tural rights, and the introduction into human society of a 
 train of misery whose terrible issues can only be fully known to the 
 divine mind. 
 
 But the capitalist may now urge, Does not the case of a skilful 
 inventor who, by the use of some new machine, turns out products at 
 a vastly increased rate, upset all your theories about men being paid 
 for actual toil ? At first blush it appears to do so, but it does not do 
 so. If men were not paid according to the produce turned out, then 
 they would not be paid for their toil. If one improves his knitting 
 machine so that he turns out a hundred pa'rs of stockings in the 
 same time as he used to turn out fifty, the price of stockings will 
 tend to fall. Unless he were secured a monopoly of stocking 
 making, he would not long retain any advantage over his fellows, 
 for nothing can ever prevent human labor so distributing itself as 
 to become generally equalized in its rewards. Unless men arbi¬ 
 trarily interfere with natural laws, no department of labor can long 
 continue in the ascendant over other departments. Just as money, 
 true money, has a tendency to distribute itself abroad wherever 
 products of industry are offered for sale ; so labor has a tendency to 
 equalize itself throughout every department of toil. There is no 
 measure of the value of labor but labor itself. Every product of 
 toil must submit to be measured by all other products of toil. I do 
 not set aside the efficacy of skill in all works of industry. The 
 most skilful Yorker is the best worker, and will reap the best re¬ 
 wards. The u skill ” of the mind will be shown through the skill 
 and “ cunning ” of the hand. The expert workman who does his 
 work as well as his fellow and in half the time, will get a better 
 payment. Yet both are paid for their labor, for the amount of 
 toil—that is, the one has a certain return, in visible products, for 
 his toil; the other has a certain, and larger, return for his toil. 
 
 But is it money which really pays the great world of industry for 
 all its toil? Without money we cannot, in the ordinary sense, be 
 paid. The digging of money from the mine will pay its producers, 
 or make them richer than if they had not done any work at all. 
 And, after that, it will be the medium, but the medium only, 
 through which profits are brought to every toiling hand. Its gen¬ 
 eral distribution at this moment would give to each family bqt a 
 
20 
 
 trifling amount. So that it's not being paid in money which makes 
 the world richer. One form of economic wealth is. as I conceive it y 
 that there be S'leh a conjunction of skill and toil in the Same 
 individual and throughout every branch of industry, that there 
 shall yet issue, among other things, a universal relaxation of -labor r 
 and our race be saved from that severe and continued toil which 
 leads only to debasement and ignorance. And here, in passing, I 
 would throw out the thought that exchange, and what is secured to- 
 industry by the principle of exchange, seem to have been designed 
 by our allwise Creator to restore to us the w*aste of the sweat of . 
 the brow—to return to th^ race, in the form of profit, far more than 
 it can ever expend in the shape of personal toil I have been long 
 impressed with the fact that all the laws of political economy have 
 a merciful sidej There is a deep and beneficent design in the inter¬ 
 dependence Sf' human labor, as well as in the interchange of 
 blessing which all producers are unconsciously compelled to 
 \ bestow upon one another in the act of production and exchange. 
 
 . I expect that the old truth is as fresh and vigorous as ever—that 
 the way to fill our barns and burst out our presses, is for industry 
 | to consecrate its first fruits to the cause of suffering humanity in 
 every land. I am quite convinced that thoughtful men will yet 
 unfold the whole subject from points of view which will command 
 our deepest interest and attention. The period is approaching 
 when, to the pulpit especially, the industrial and economic ethics 
 of the Bible must be for the time being of paramount importance^. 
 
 The man who works is the true and only producer. All that his 
 toil brings forth, aided or not aided by implements or tools, is his. 
 property, unless it can be established that there are other reasons 
 outside of production itself, which confer a title to a share of the 
 products of his toil for people who do not work. If the fact of the 
 ownership of capital establishes a claim to a large share of the 
 products of industry, we may be quite sure that as an economic 
 truth it will fall in with every other economic truth. 
 
 On the one side we have the claims of the capitalist: 1st. That 
 he should have a share of the products of industry, because he 
 owns the capital or appliances; 2nd. That he should have a share 
 because others use and employ what belongs to him. These two 
 grounds, I think, fairly set forth and embrace his claims. 
 
 On the other side we have the claims of industry, antagonistic to 
 those of capital as just set forth : 1st, That all the tools and appli¬ 
 ances of industry are designed and have been constructed specially 
 to aid the worker in his work; and 2nd, That he cannot give a 
 share of the produce of his toil, such as capital claims, to those in¬ 
 to whose hands his tools may have fallen; in other words, that he 
 cannot give away what he produces with the aid of the tools, with¬ 
 out being reduced to the position he would be in, were he still 
 compelled to struggle for a living without tools at all, or with 
 only those of the rudest description. 
 
 The laborer may urge, and surely with the utmost propriety, 
 that it js unnatural to divorce him from his tools ; to compel him 
 to support himself and family by his personal toil; and out of the 
 same toil, to have him give away all profits on his work to the very 
 tools designed and constructed for the help of industry; for it is 
 virtually doing this so far as he and his labor are concerned. May 
 he not say, and say well, If the rate of profit you secure for the 
 capital, the tools, and machinery of our work, is such as to cause 
 
21 
 
 it to double itself in ten or twelve years, ought I not to see my 
 position as a producer advanced at a corresponding rate ? Ought 
 I not by this time to have good clothes, good food, a home of my 
 own, and my family in comfort ? Ought I not to be sharing, along 
 with you, in all the precious things I produce? Ought I not to see 
 my children, if not myself, rising in the social scale, and inheriting 
 a share of all that is going? Ought I not to be now getting quit of 
 my ignorance, my rags, and my wretchedness? Why should the 
 ground which I till not yield to me her strength? Is the very 
 curse of Cain upon me that I and my children after me should be 
 as fugitives and vagabonds in the earth? Why should the little 
 ones whom I love be taken from their childish play to be ruined in 
 body and mind, and yoked to repulsive labor? How is it that the 
 very order of nature should be reversed, and the idler be rich and 
 ever accumulating more riches, and the toiler be poor and familiar 
 for evermore with poverty? Why should all these vast industrial 
 resources only issue in reducing me and my fellow laborers to mere 
 days wages and mere days labor? What good do we get out of 
 them if we never own any of the things we make ? Is it not our 
 labor which doubles your capital? How is it that we have lost 
 the ownership of the very tools with which we work? How is it 
 that the working millions, producing all that is handled in every 
 market, should still remain poor, very poor, and the few fortunate 
 ones, who neither toil nor spin, be rich, very rich ? 
 
 These may be hard questions, and we may be troubled at their 
 presence ; but never were more legitimate or more pressing enquiries 
 presented before the minds of thoughtful men. They must be 
 answered sooner or later, and he is far from being a wise or a 
 prudent man who shirks the investigation. And they will be 
 answered when political economy, in the person of its expounders, 
 ceases to play the courtier in presence of capital. God forbid 
 that, with such a world of suffering at our doors, we should any 
 longer barter the pure gold of this noble science for a lot of 
 sounding brass. 
 
 But the truth lies at our hand. The working man is not able, 
 by his own work, to produce for himself and also for the capitalist. 
 It is beyond his capacity to do so. The very tools, in that case, 
 instead of being an aid become an oppression to him. To be able, 
 as some may say, by an ingenious turn of the wheel of fortune, to 
 take all the appliances of labor, all the inventions of industry, 
 out of its hands, and then put them back again with a demand 
 that all the visible produce of labor shall go into the pockets of 
 others than those who toil, is an utter subversion of what is just 
 and right, a complete destruction of every principle in political 
 economy. You may urge that possession is nine points in law, but 
 I am bound to tell you, on the part of the working world, that this, 
 accomplished, will ruin industry so thoroughly that there will not 
 be much to choose between white slavery and black. 
 
 The increased production flowing from the employment of these 
 aids to industry does not come to hand on the ground that the 
 worker owns these resources or aids. The ownership is invested in 
 the hand which has toiled and fashioned. It is simply the fruit of 
 industry. Wherever the commodity goes, the ownership goes with 
 it, so Tong as the labor title, or title of service can be produced. 
 When that fails, ownership also fails. The occupancy is there 
 because the ownership is there ; and the ownership is there because 
 
22 
 
 the title which labor gives is a complete title. The ownership is 
 one thing ; the employment of all the implements and tools is 
 another and quite different thing. The laborer who owns his tools 
 has increased production, not because he owns, but because he 
 works with them. It is certain, therefore, that there can be no 
 increased production (but the reverse) when capital gets posses¬ 
 sion of the tools and hires men to work for day’s wages. The 
 increased produce appears, not because all these things are owned, 
 but because men work with them. The ownership has therefore no 
 relation to production, except, it may be, as a stimulant to those who 
 own and work at the same time. Production is caused neither bj T the 
 owner as such, nor by the ownership. Production flows forth, not 
 because things are owned, not because things are hired, not be¬ 
 cause men are hired, but because men work. If, with the employ¬ 
 ment of certain agricultural implements, the farmer is able to 
 support himself and family in decency and comfort, he can do no 
 more if the ownership of his capital passes away inio other hands. 
 The yield will just be the same. Indeed, it will, if anything, be 
 decreased ; for the stimulus to toil will be lessened, and those hopes 
 and inducements to labor which are inspired by a full return for 
 one’s work, and by the pride and happiness of owning property, 
 will cease to operate. The farmer’s returns, which formerly were 
 sufficient to keep his family in comfort and independence, will now 
 be so diminished by the returns demanded by capital, and by the 
 manner of rating or estimating these returns in the form of a centage 
 on the money value, that he and his family will be reduced to all 
 but beggary. And all this because the capital, so called, which at 
 one time aided him so well, now calls for and obtains by far the 
 largest share in a definite amount of produce, not increased but 
 rather diminished in volume and value by the change in the dis¬ 
 position of the capital. The plough which in the hands of its 
 owner turns over its two acres a day, cannot torn over any more 
 because it happens to fall into other hands. The bit of ground 
 which, by means of labor spent on it, supports a man in comfort, 
 cannot at the same time support an idler in wealth. What a 
 terrible means of oppression does capital become when it is thus 
 turned with grinding and destructive force upon the very hands 
 which produce it; not only arresting all those powerful moral and 
 social influences calculated to flow from healthy and well requited 
 toil, but opening a wide door for the entrance of all that is vile and 
 base and calculated to disorganise society. It will not do for yon 
 to urge, in justification of what we see around us, and as so many 
 have urged before you, that if capitalists did not provide labor 
 with tools, labor woul^ perish. For I might ask you, How did 
 capitalists come to get possession of all the tools and instruments 
 of labor? Was it by cunning or wit? Labor, f om the very 
 beginning, has produced all the tools and machinery. Surely it 
 could not be mere accident that has thrown everything one way. 
 Some great principle must have been violated to bring before us so 
 extraordinary and unnatural a spectacle as a complete divorce be¬ 
 tween labor and its tools. I might thus hedge you up from ques¬ 
 tion to question, until you were at last driven to the wall; or 
 obliged "to acknowledge, what indeed is the truth, that industry 
 has from the beginning lost its capital, and must continue to lose 
 it, by the utter perversion of every principle in monetary science; 
 by that cunning which, shrinking from hard toil, or any toil at all. 
 
23 
 
 has never ceased, since the world began, to play fast and loose with 
 honest and unsuspecting industry. 
 
 Whatever stress you may lay upon the circumstance that you are 
 the owner of the capital, the fact remains that it is the laborer’s 
 toil which brings in your returns. That cannot be disputed. It 
 is out of his toil that you are paid. For if lie did not work for you, 
 then you would have to take the tools in band and work for your¬ 
 self. And if you did so, you would just have the produce of your 
 labor as your reward. You would take the workingman’s place, 
 and you would get the workingman’s reward. Political economy 
 must ever regard the worker as the producer, to whom a reward 
 single and indivisible must fall. It is to the worker, and to the 
 worker alone, that the reward must ever come. It is therefore im¬ 
 possible that industry can ever pa} you, or pay even itself, on the 
 ground of ownership. 
 
 Again, I might ask, What about the decrease in production 
 caused by the capitalist ceasing to work? I suppose he was formerly 
 a producer. He could not be a capitalist (setting inheritance 
 aside) unless he had been a producer, for surely he must have 
 given value to the people in exchange for the people’s capital. 
 The strange thing in the whole affair is—what has become of 
 all which is alleged to have been given in exchange for the 
 capital? Can any one lay his hands upon it? Do you say 
 the multitudes have consumed it in food ? That cannot be; 
 for what they have produced is worth far more than their food 
 and clothing. The capitalists are all fed too, and well fed, 
 but in addition they have managed to get hold of all the good 
 things made by toiling hands; and furthermore, by means of 
 paper, to carry a claim against industry, the principal of \vhich 
 is so vast that the present resources of labor could not liquidate 
 it for a century to come. You say the capitalist looks after his 
 property. But there is no production in that. Everybody is bound 
 to look after his property, and everybody does look after it. Could 
 you ask your neighbor to pay you for looking after your own 
 property? Does production consist in buying the same goods, or 
 the same stocks, ten or a dozen times in the course of a day? Are 
 gambling and gai bling debts production? How much production 
 is there in Wall street or Lombard street ? Is there any in specula¬ 
 tion? These are the fields in which many a capitalist wastes his 
 life. But where is the 'production ? 
 
 When a full and f dr profit is obtained by each of two workmen 
 in the exchange of the product of his work, it is evident that there 
 is not room for further, a id perhaps larger profits, for every one 
 of perhaps half a dozen people over the same products. The first 
 and principal profit is secured by the producers. The labor of 
 transporting to destination will legitimately be paid. But now is 
 it possible that additional profits can be given to those who do 
 nothing but sipeculate in the great staples of industry ? 
 
 The writer of the article on Political Economy in the last edition 
 of the E icyclopoedia Britannica asks, in the defence of capital, and 
 with a triumphant air, “ What could the most skilful agriculturist 
 perform without his spade and his plough? a weaver without his 
 loom? or a house-carpenter without his saw, his axe, and his 
 planes?” There would be very little “performance” indeed. 
 There might be enough to keep life in the body of the producer ; 
 there would certainly not be so much as a bite for the hungry 
 
24 
 
 capitalist. The one, at all events, would live because he still did 
 some little work; the other would perish from the face of the earth. 
 The one would, at the worst, have a hut and some skins to cover 
 him ; the other would go naked and without shelter. Capital, in 
 putting such questions, pronounces its own condemnation. 
 
 But will Capital now permit Industry to ask a few questions? 
 What would capitalists do if there were no workingmen to make 
 the spade, plough, loom, axe and other tools ? What would capital¬ 
 ists do if there were no persons willing to toil in the mine for 
 gold, on the land for food, in the bowels of the earth for fuel, or in 
 the forests for timber ? What w T ould capitalists do if they produced 
 nothing to exchange for the gold, the food, or the fuel ? What 
 would capitalists do if industry refused to give away its tools and 
 machinery, its clothing and food and furnishings, unless for an 
 equivalent in labor value ? In a word, what could capital do with¬ 
 out industry ? 
 
 I now ask every intelligent reader if he is not prepared, with 
 myself, to repel with scorn the gratuitous assumptions of these 
 writers, that something they call “ Capital ” found Industry a beggar, 
 fed it, clothed it, and fostered it into life and vigour; when the 
 truth is that Capital is indebted to Industry for its very existence. 
 
 From all that has been stated it is quite evident that modern 
 workmen (and, alas! the children of modern workmen) are sub¬ 
 jected to severe, constant, and depressing toil in order to provide the 
 vast returns demanded by capital. Let us just glance at what capital 
 takes, and what industry receives. I am willing to abide by the 
 verdict of any unprejudiced on-looker. Are not the workingmen, 
 as a body, just kept out of the breakers, nothing more? Do they 
 get anything beyond a bare living, with a hard struggle at that? 
 Are not suffering and poverty their inevitable lot? Contrast their 
 position with that of the capitalist. Mark how the principle of 
 accumulation, once begun, continues to swell the hoard. The 
 veriest simpleton, one who knows as little of any department of 
 industry as an unborn child, has only to invest in a successful 
 banking institution, and he begins forthwith to draw out of indus¬ 
 try. The anxiety of the workingman is to keep himself and family 
 in life—the anxiety of the capitalist is to add to his abounding and 
 increasing wealth. See how one man reaps as much as two or 
 three hundred producers. One of these capitalists has just died in 
 New York, leaving property worth one hundred millions of dollars. 
 Where is the equivalent, the other one hundred millions of dollars 
 given in exchange for the one hundred millions taken? Is it in the 
 shape of rents of houses ? Is it houses, then, which pay rent ? Let 
 me tell you, it is out of the toil of human beings that rents are taken, 
 and that industry has nothing left to represent these one hundred 
 millions it has given. It ought to have that amount somewhere in 
 houses or other property ; for if labor has given this vast sum (and 
 of that there can be no doubt) to one man in New York, it ought to 
 have a corresponding sum to represent it. Do you think it has gone 
 to the laboring classes in food and clothing ? It has gone no such 
 road. Mr. Astor did not feed the workingmen of New York. The^e 
 workingmen fed themselves by their own labor. But they have left 
 in one man’s hands as much as would feed the whole population of 
 New York for two or three years. You see then how interesting 
 the investigation really becomes when we begin to institute a 
 search for the equivalents of capital. I am quite in earnest in my 
 
25 
 
 desire to have you investigate the question of rent as a return for* 
 capital. You will fiud that the dwellings, the very homes of the 
 people, or what should be their homes, as well as their tools and 
 machinery, are all passing into the hands of capitalists through 
 the violation of the same laws. In this investigation one illustra¬ 
 tion is as good as a thousand. The same pernicious system which 
 takes away a man’s spade, can take away his plough, his horses, 
 his stables and barns, and at last hi 3 house or home. And is not 
 labor, to a very large extent, now really destitute of house and 
 home ? If my labor fails to provide for me a home I can call my 
 own, then the labor of my life has proved a failure, and other peo¬ 
 ple, by some means or other, but not by labor, have got the best 
 produce of my life’s toil. 
 
 I have studied these questions long enough to know that capital 
 has acquired its vast accumulations mainly through the practical 
 destruction, as an industrial instrument of exchange, of the money 
 provided for industry and produced by industry. The economist 
 has investigated to little purpose who has failed to perceive the 
 almost unlimited power thrown by such means into the hands of a 
 class. Capital (or some intangible thing called credit) has 
 gathered up the true moi ey out of the hand of industry (leaving a 
 fiction in its place) and concen'rated and employed it for its own 
 ends largely in the fields of speculation and gambling; and 
 through the enormous increase of mere buying and selling, repeat¬ 
 ing of transactions over the same goods, selling and buying millions 
 worth of stocks in the course of a day, multiplying “ paper ” with¬ 
 out end for discount, and concentrating all these enormous pay¬ 
 ments into a few so-called monied centres, has actually deceived 
 people into the notion that nature has failed in providing a 
 sufficient quantity of money for our wants. And there are not 
 wanting those on this side the water, who, apparently in the 
 extremity of their despair of ever understanding what all this con¬ 
 fusion is about, do not hesitate to launch their anathemas against 
 even the gold and silver. I do not say that it was through the 
 destruction of its money labor first began to be oppressed ; but this 
 I say, that it is by such means the oppression has, in modern times, 
 become concentrated, systemised, and vastly intensified. Any 
 government which has thus practically destroyed the true money 
 of its people, and cast the gold, or most of the gold, into the vortex 
 of speculation and gambling, has entered on a path so full of perils 
 that I tremble to think of the result. The road may be a long one 
 to travel, but sooner or later the end must come. Every step in 
 that road is strewn with the wrecks of industry ; and these 
 wrecks not only tell of the sufferings of the lowest ranks of society, 
 but of the ruin of millions above them who began life with bright 
 and joyous hopes. Now, it is deeply interesting to trace the man¬ 
 ner in which capital exercises its cruel and unrelenting oppression 
 on labor. It is said to double itself in a certain period, say in 
 eight or ten years. A capitalist who invests his money in stocks 
 or shares expects it to be doubled in about that time. There are 
 certain bank stocks which, on the original shares, are doubled 
 every five or six years. The language in which all this is set forth 
 has become incorporated with the daily life of society. All these 
 vast returns come out of labor. 1 here is no other conceivable 
 source from which they can be taken. Personal toil, aided by its 
 own appliances, or what ought to be its own appliances, produces the 
 
26 
 
 whole. The products of industry, it is admitted, have been 
 greatly increased by the employment of machinery. Industry is 
 now able to accomplish a great deal more than it formerly did in 
 the same space of time ; but capital steps in and demands a full 
 profit, a certain rate per cent., out of the entire value of all the tools, 
 factories, houses, warehouses, implements, and machinery employed ; 
 and all this continued from year to year, so long as these various 
 appliances exist. That is to say, labor builds a house rated at a 
 thousand pounds ; capital demands from labor, and gets for that 
 house, during a course of years, fifty thousand or a hundred thou¬ 
 sand pounds. Labor has put a value equivalent to a thousand 
 pounds, and no more, into the building. Capital, under the name 
 of rent, compels labor, some way or other, to pay a continuous tax 
 so long as the house will shield from wind and rain, amounting, it 
 may be with compound interest, to two or three hundred times the 
 actual labor value embodied in it. Labor builds a warehouse or 
 factory worth ten or twenty thousand pounds ; under the demand 
 which capital makes for its inevitable rate, Tabor continues to 
 pay, whilst the building stands, an amount which may be counted 
 by the million. And so with tools and every kind of machinery 
 and appliance. The things produced by labor thus became instru¬ 
 ments of oppression to labor. The working millions, instead of being 
 benefited by capital, are thus reduced to such a struggle to obtain 
 a living, that the painted and feathered savages who hunt over our 
 western plains, in their wild exuberance and joy, have a happiness 
 to which the wearied and anxious toilers are total strangers. And 
 so, poor blind humanity, age after age, continually grinds in its 
 prison-house. Now, if labor owned all its tools and appliances (as 
 it certainly ought) what a different state of things we would wit¬ 
 ness. The working man would then begin to advance through the 
 only legitimate way by which industry can ever advance—that is, 
 he would, either by himself or in equitable co-operation with his 
 fellows, own and sell the produce of his own toil, wrought out by 
 his own hands, and with the aid of his own tools. He would own 
 the house, and the thousand pounds worth of labor invested; and 
 he and his children after him would not only sit rent-free for life, 
 but every eight or ten years (if the estimated return of capital be 
 taken as the true rate of increase) he would have resources at 
 command equal to another dwelling worth a thousand pounds. 
 The working men would, singly or in co-operation, own the ware¬ 
 houses, factories, and all the tools and machinery, and the con¬ 
 stant strain which capital now lays upon them would be turned to 
 their advantage. They would own all the goods they make, and 
 would derive the profits on the sale of these goods. The purchasing 
 power of industry would be increased a hundred-fold. The masses, 
 
 ! under the rigor of the reign of this capital, are so poor that they 
 may be said to have hardly any purchasing power at all. Their 
 constant anxiety is to keep soul and body together. What can 
 they do as patrons of luxuries or the fine arts, or even of the vast 
 mass of things which go to make up the general comforts of life? 
 But let them simply own their tools and machinery and factories— 
 enjoy, without paying for the use of, that which is their own—and 
 see the change which would take place. The gaunt poverty and 
 the crime which are now the reproach of our modern civilization 
 would disappear as if by magic. The mighty and wealthy world 
 # of industry would empty every market in a day. There would be 
 
2 ? 
 
 a Call for goods, and the best of goods, which would set evety 
 wheel in motion, and stimulate every mind into thought and 
 activity. The wealthy would have about as many visible comforts 
 and luxuries as ever; those now poor and degraded would be lifted 
 to the same plane. All would work, and all would receive, under 
 the increased stimulus of new and improved machinery, everything 
 good to their heart’s content. Machinery would be so perfected 
 and arranged that repulsive work on any large scale, would hardly 
 ever require to be performed by direct manual toil. The wide gulf 
 which now separates us into different ranks and classes, our 
 modern caste, would disappear. Education and all the refining 
 arts of civilization would take hold of and leaven society. Think of 
 the complete change in our literature, and of the demand for pure 
 and stimulating works, with the great majority of men at once 
 thinkers and readers. What a renovation there would be of the 
 bookseller’s shelves ! Where could a market then be found for the 
 disgusting products (literature we cannot call it) of diseased 
 imagination ? That which, in the hand of the capitalist, is now 
 the most terrible instrument of oppression to our race, would con¬ 
 fer upon industry resources of such incalculable and beneficent 
 power, that nations might then be said to be born in a day. And, 
 last and most blessed effect of all, the uncounted resources of 
 industry, instead of being concentrated on self and accumulation, 
 would overflow in unmeasured largess to everv land. 
 
 The average centage which is demanded and obtained by capital 
 appears to be the average division of not only all the profits of 
 industry, but of all its products too, after a provision is made to 
 keep industry just in life. If capital be some great and independ-, 
 ent force acting in antagonism to industry; that is, if it be not 
 industry itself, but something outside of industry, whose interest 
 it is to take all it can possibly obtain from the producers, then we 
 may be certain that it will get industry so thoroughly into its power, 
 that anything which maybe given to it beyond bare existence must 
 be looked upon in the light only of a gratuity. 
 
 The great and substantial truth that utilities cannot be sold y here 
 forces itself upon the attention, and we must follow it out in what¬ 
 ever direction it leads. It has been somewhat timidly approached 
 by the later economists. But if it be a principle in political economy, 
 we may be sure that it will never lead us astray. I have never 
 seen any reason to doubt that close and critical examination will 
 result in its being generally received as an accredited doctrine, and 
 perhaps one of the most important in the whole range of the 
 science. If utilities are all gratuitous, it follows that nothing but 
 labor, as represented by its productions, or as embodied in its handi¬ 
 work, can ever be sold ; that payments withheld, or given in con¬ 
 secutive periods, can never increase or diminish the real value of a 
 commodity; and that no article, from a needle to an anchor, from 
 a palace to a cottage, can ever, on any ground whatever , receive, 
 permanently , more from labor than the labor value embodied. If 
 you will but reflect over the subject, you will come to perceive that 
 to speak of the value of the use of a thing is really as absurd as to 
 speak of the weighing of a sunbeam, or of measuring in money, a 
 mother’s love. Industry, as a productive agent, can never both 
 produce the property and pay for the use of the property. If it is 
 compelled to do so, then its tools or appliances are not aids to in¬ 
 dustry, but the reverse. The economist must use terms in accordance 
 
22 
 
 With the principles of the science; and when we speak of value it 
 must ever refer to commercial or industrial value, or, what is perhaps 
 a safer phrase, value in exchange. It is not utilities which are sold, 
 but human labor. And around that human labor, as the grand 
 centre and regulator of all, everything that is represented by that 
 uncertain phrase “ demand and supply 7 ’ must continually revolve.* 
 
 The consciousness which men in general entertain of the amount \ 
 of toil they have embodied in what they have to sell, holds in its 
 inexorable grasp all demand and all supply; so lhat men, as a rule, 
 will neither give away their goods for less than an equivalent, nor 
 continue to produce things for which there may be no demand, or 
 to produce them in similar or greater quantities when there is a less 
 demand. We do not reflect at all as we ought to do, that in every 
 exchange, demand and supply co-exist in each of the parties to the 
 exchange, so that four factors of equivalent power are ever at 
 work regulating the movements of the whole machine. Demand, 
 among civilized men, can never remain, as a rule, at the mercy of 
 supply, nor supply at the mercy of demand. On some far away 
 coast, an Indian may exchange an otter skin for a glittering bead, 
 but it is not an exchange of value for value. Civilization in this 
 instance, as in many others, has only over-reached ignorance and 
 barbarism. 
 
 It appears from all the foregoing considerations, that a u wage- 
 fund theory,” for which a place in the realms of political economy 
 has lately been so strenuously sought, has no tangible ground on 
 which to rest, and no certain or reliable principles to present to the 
 mind. The system of days wages, as we now know it throughout 
 all the fields of industry, comes before the philosophic eye only as 
 a ruin—it may be a vast and splendid one, but yet only a ruin. 
 
 There is but one refuge more into which capital endeavors to 
 retreat. It lays claim to a return on the ground that profits may 
 be divided between itself and industry, or on the ground that profits 
 
 *“ Utility and value are mere accidents of a thing arising from th e 
 
 fact that somebody wants it. Money must have utility as the 
 
 basis of value.” “ Money and the Mechanism of Exchange ” by Pro¬ 
 fessor Jevons. The learned Author would have us believe that mere 
 desire or clamor for money—the crying of the public baby—imparts 
 to money the “ accident ” of value, and that utility, not labor, is the 
 basis of value! Probably he has not given much consideration to 
 labor as the source of all value. Apart from this and some similar 
 errors, Mr. Jevons has produced an important treatise on monetary 
 science. Nothing could be clearer or more to the point than his re¬ 
 marks on International Money, and to American statesmen especially 
 what he has to say on “The future American Dollar” ought to prove 
 of profound interest in the present agitated state of the public mind. Lie 
 says : “ The most easy and important step which can now betaken towards 
 an international money, consists in the assimilation of the American 
 dollar to the live-franc piece. There is little doubt that the adhesion of the 
 American Government to the proposal of the Congress (Monetary) of 1863 
 would give the holding turn to the metric system of weights, measures 
 and moneys. It is quite likely that it might render the dollar the future 
 universal unit. The fact that the dollar is already the monetary unit of 
 many parts of the world gives it long odds. In becoming assimilated to 
 the French 6cu, American gold would be capable of circulation in Europe, 
 or wherever the French napoleon has hitherto been accepted. It may 
 seem unpatriotic in an Englishman to advocate a change which may lead 
 to the defeat of the pound sterling, but I look upon any one scheme of 
 unification as bettor than none. Whatever may be the ultimate results, 1 
 desire to see assimilation between the French and American systems 
 
ftaay be doubled. I do not think that capital could venture oil 
 more inhospitable ground than this. It seeks a sorry refuge. 
 Political economy at once seizes the intruder and decapitates lnm 
 at a stroke. The true remuneration of labor, as has been shewn, is 
 not what is paid in wages, but is the amount of the things produced, 
 the visible product of handiwork. The industry of the world can 
 never be remunerated except through the total industrial products 
 of the world. As the products collectively are the remuneration of 
 all the toilers, so each particular product is the remuneration, 
 either in itself or by an equivalent, of him who has produced it. In 
 any other light than this, the phrase u the cost of labor” is a solecism. 
 The entire mechanism of exchange consists simply in an exchange 
 of services. These exchanges, from beginning to end, must proceed 
 on the principle of equity. If there is a double profit for one of the 
 parties, then there is no protit at all for the other party. If there 
 is a double profit for the one half of the number of producers, 
 then there is not a scrap left for the other half. Such a principle, 
 it is evident, would at once strangle all exchange. And so of the 
 claim on the ground of partition of the profit. Industry may, out 
 of accumulated resources, give away what it pleases in charity, 
 pleasure or amusement, or indeed for anything it may desire ; but 
 as a productive agent, held in check and regulated in its profits by 
 a healthy and untrammelled competition, it can never afford to give 
 away to capital half or any portion of its profits. The increment of 
 profit has no natural tendency to resolve itself, as so many econo¬ 
 mists imagine, into certain parts or divisions, a portion for this, a 
 
 adopted as soon as possible. For reasons subsequently stated, 1 consider 
 the dollar so good a unit that it would be mere national prejudice to 
 oppose it, were there a fair chance of its general adoption. Even if it 
 were not generally adopted, it would be a great step in advance if Great 
 Britain, America, and France were to agree to coin gold money iden¬ 
 tical in weight and fineness, which might circulate indifferently as 
 sovereigns, five-dollar pieces, and five-franc pieces.” Professor Jevons 
 adds that he considers the gold dollar and five-franc piece too small to be 
 coined in gold, as they suffer too much by abrasion. It may interest the 
 reader, and perhaps add some weight to the foregoing, if I here repro¬ 
 duce what I stated on this important subject some years since. “ The 
 decimal system of curreny, with which, happily, we in this Dominion 
 are now so conversant, even though it be confessedly artificial, is 
 yet oue we would not like to see displaced. Some years since we 
 went, all at once, and with extraordinary facility, from the old and 
 cumbrous method of computation by pounds, shillings and pence, to 
 the simple plan of dollars and cents ; and thus a common system prevails 
 over ah North America. The example of the United States con¬ 
 ferred upon us this great boon, and the advantage to both our inter¬ 
 national and domestic commerce has been very great. I conceive it would 
 be a great advantage to the people of the United Kingdom if they should 
 at some future day adopt the decimal currency, and prefer the dollar 
 as the central unit, around which so large a portion of the commerce of 
 the world has revolved. I think it would be well if all nations were to 
 bring their coins into decimal relation, and to adopt the dollar as the 
 monetary unit, with, to us, its familiar range of decimal multiples and 
 subdivisions. But this is only our national idea ; and the French people 
 will cling to the familiar franc, and the English peoplo to the no less fam¬ 
 iliar pound ; aud although the pound sterling of England, the five-dollar 
 gold piece, or half-eagle of America, and the proposed twenty-five franc 
 piece of France, approach each otlior in value, they are not the same 
 thing precisely, and it is just the precise equivalent that is wanted in a sys¬ 
 tem of international coinage.”— International Coinage and the 
 Standards of Value. 
 
second for that, and a third for something else. It can only faithfully 
 evidence itself by the general advance and well-being of industry, 
 or of those who work and produce—not by accumulations of money, 
 but by all the visible comfortable surroundings of industry. Skill 
 and energy are the two forces which vve bring to bear in the act of 
 production. One who works harder or more skilfully than 
 another, will have more of the good things of this life, not because 
 he has made a greater profit than the other, but because he has had 
 more things to exchange. He will indeed have, in sum, a greater 
 profit collectively than the lazy or indifferent worker, but he will 
 have it because he has had more things to exchange with others 
 more diligent or equally diligent with himself. ? Tis but poor profit 
 that is made out of the lazy portion of the community. They will 
 remain poor, not because they have small profits or half profits, but 
 because they have few things to exchange. When each works well, 
 all fare well. The principle of exchange has no premium for the igno¬ 
 rant or indifferent worker. The man who produces only one pair of 
 shoes a day cannot expect to exchange them against the five pairs 
 produced by some other in the same space of time. The value of our 
 labor is seen in what we produce. The five pairs of shoes will not 
 seek to exchange against the one pair, because value ever seeks for 
 an equivalent. The five pairs will naturally seek to exclmnge with 
 some other things produced by some one equally skilful and 
 energetic. Here like clings to like. The owner of the one pair 
 will get his profit according to the labor saved to him in the ex¬ 
 change ; the owner of the five pairs will get his profit also according 
 to the labor saved to him—a single and indivisible profit on each 
 transaction. The true way to save our labor, and thus to earn 
 profit, is to work skilfully and well. For labor to share its profits 
 with a class who do not produce (for in these days there is a great 
 deal of working, so called, the business of mere 11 busybodies,” which 
 is not production but its opposite) is just as unnatural as to attempt 
 to double its profits. In either case the inevitable tendency would 
 be to the destruction and ruin of industry. To say that industry, 
 under the reign of capital, gets a share of profits, is to say what 
 is not true. It does not get the smallest remnant of profit. All 
 the profit is swept into the coffers of the capitalist, much of it to 
 be reissued in further oppression of labor, an oppression which has 
 its limit only in the capacity of industry to bear the strain. * 
 
 * T quote from the Report of Commissioners on Hours of Labor: Com¬ 
 monwealth of Massachusetts, 1866: 
 
 “The average wages of males throughout the United States in these de¬ 
 scriptions of labor—manufacture of Cotton, Woollen, Clothing, Shoes, 
 Ac—in 1860, were, males, $816; females, $176 per annum.” 
 
 “ The wages in the cotton mills, of the six New England States, deduced 
 by the method stated, from the census of 1860, give:— 
 
 Wages for males, per annum. $285 75 
 
 Do Females do . . 158 75 ” 
 
 The average rate of wages over the whole of the United States is given at 
 911 cents per day. 
 
 A letter to the Commissioners from one of the best paid journeymen 
 mechanics, a tir-t-class shipcarpenter, states that with his family of eight 
 persons, he has been driven to “a system of economy which has left pain¬ 
 ful evidences of its severity,” and has been compelled to remove his 
 children from school to contribute towards the support of the family. 
 
 1 suppose there is no one more competent, at least on this continent, to 
 judge of the emoluments of workingmen than Mr, E, I J. Rogers, who was 
 
31 
 
 I have purposely avoided any lengthened reference, in the present 
 paper, to what is generally understood by brain work or in*el- 
 lectual labor. 1 have hardly felt it necessary that it should engage 
 our attention, as I think it does not materially atfect the argument. 
 It has come under our observation for a few moments only as relat¬ 
 ed to the visible products of toil, or, in other words, as in a sort of 
 “ silent partnership” with the hand. This part of the subject is 
 far from being devoid of interest, but requires more consideration 
 than I can at present devote to it. The equivalents of manual 
 labor are not difficult to distinguish. A gold dollar is the exact 
 equivalent of another gold dollar, and a bushel of barley, as 
 nearly as may be, of another bushel of barley. Most peopH, and 
 even some economists, think that gold is dearer than silver, and dia¬ 
 monds, in their price, more precious than flour; and even some gov¬ 
 ernments, professing to be very wise,have,on this and other grounds, 
 demonetised their silver ; but a day’s labor of digging silver is just 
 worth a day’s laber of digging gold, and the labor of producing 
 diamonds is just worth the labor of producing flour. The equations 
 in each case are at our hand. But who is acute enough to discover 
 the unit of value when we come to compare material products 
 with immaterial ? Is there any true ratio of exchange between 
 things so different ? If there be no ratio, can you arrive at an 
 equation ? What is the exact money value of a thought? Has it 
 money value at all? Can you measure it in a quart or a r eck? 
 We pay more for a song from Jenny Lind than from some ordinary 
 singer—more for a good than for an indifferent teacher ; but where 
 is the standard of value ? How much is a song worth ? In read¬ 
 ing this article,you will pay for the paper on which it is printed, for 
 the ink, for the type setting, for the press work, the folding, the 
 stitching, or, in other words for the labor embodied in all these 
 processes, but I am sure 1 could not tell you what, if any, is the mint 
 value of any thought there may be in it, ai*d as little can you. The 
 thought may have commenced before some of my readers were born. 
 I am conscious of no small amount of brain work, and yet the 
 thought has no dimension, no weight, no parts at all. You cannot 
 manipulate it, or place it in your scales, or adjust it by your most 
 delicate balance. It may have a general relation to other thought, 
 or special relation to thought on economic science, but what rela- 
 toin has it to a hit of money? Any value of this kind you place 
 upon it must be merely an arbitrary value. The only manual labor 
 1 have had with it is in handling the pen, and that you know is not 
 worth mentioning. You cannot pay me for what some may call 
 my “ time,” for I have none of it to sell, and political economy 
 cannot turn time into a commodity. The present work has been to 
 me emphatically a labor of love, and I dont think that I could be 
 repaid in anything but similar coin. Has nature made such a 
 
 4 
 
 one of the Commissioners on Hours of T abor, appointed by the State of 
 Massachusetts. He says, in the above Keport. “ With constant thought¬ 
 fulness this income (#1.25 per day, Sundays included) necessitated an 
 economy penurious in its character, often failing to meet the demands of 
 health in clothing; and throwing the support of aged parents on more 
 favored relations.” “ Wages,” he adds, “as at present paid are notan 
 equitable return lor labor performed. It is universally understood that the 
 laborer has only a living. The idea of what a living is, is comparatively 
 t levated in this country; but figures show that the wages of labor do not 
 reach on the whole that point.” 
 
dividing line between Intelligence and Work as that one party 
 shall be able to say, We have all the intelligence and must get all 
 the products of toil, except what is just able to keep you, Work, in 
 life ? Has she sacrificed Labor in her desire to endow Intelligence? 
 Is the one to be gainful to the other, or does it exist only to oppress 
 its partner in toil ? What good things is it possible for cunning 
 or shrewdness to leave, as exchange, in the hands of industry ? It 
 is among those everchanging values who^e stability has been all 
 but destroyed by the present mercantile system (undoubtedly a 
 system of the most dangerous communism) that our modern man of 
 business rears his fortune, and when he dies, the pulpit and 
 press applaudingly clap their hands and hold him up, so far 
 as his gains are concerned, as a bright model to the rising 
 generation. But where is the production ? What has industry 
 reaped for all that it has given, or rather that has been taken 
 away from it. What has he left behind? A lot of money in 
 his will? or avast deal of service in the hands of his toiling 
 fellow men ? Shall I use my “wit ” in taking what does not belong 
 to me ? One man, we will say, is engaged within doors in some 
 light pleasant fancy work ; or he may be “ a professional man” 
 writing a few letters, or sweeping dollars by the hundred into his 
 coffers by the mere stroke of his pen : and he looks down from his 
 window on another toiling in a deep and filthy cavity in the street, 
 clearing away some obstruction tvhich threatens miasma and 
 disease to a whole neighborhood. Who gets the best return ? 
 Which of the two ought to get the best return ? I do not say they 
 ought to change places. Each may be in his right place. All I ask is 
 who should be best paid ? The economists are careful to tell us 
 that risk and disagreeableness are important elements in deter¬ 
 mining prices. Do they determine prices or values in this case, or 
 in ten thousand like it around you every day ? We know that it is 
 hand-work which really does pay for all the brain-work which 
 claims and receives payment. As we generally understand the 
 term, payment, it could not otherwise be paid. But there should 
 be an interchange, a true commerce, a just reciprocity, ought there 
 not? None should be burdened. The brains should surely be 
 coming over, by this time, to the side of the hand. If products pay 
 for intelligence, then intelligence should be largely the property of 
 toil. But is it so ? If brain takes away the produce of hand 
 surely hand should get the produce of brain. Industry by this 
 time should be so well taught to do its work as never more to need 
 a teacher. We are fond of talking of our mental labor, and of what 
 we should get for that labor, but it is all simply thought. As regards 
 visible products it is not worth a rap till you put out hand and let 
 us see some fruit. I fully believe in brains taking industry by the 
 hand; but, w r ithin the range of industrial application I have as 
 little faith in brains without industry as in industry witnout brains. 
 Separate them and you destroy them. Can you tell me to what 
 extent intelligence or intellect has itself suffered by being divorced 
 from work ? How has society fared ? Perhaps we have a weak¬ 
 ling, a silly nondescript, where we might have had Spartan brain 
 and vigor. Is not the mutual helpfulness of the family circle to be 
 carried out into the larger circle of general humanity ? What if we 
 have hitherto missed a great economic truth in the general consti¬ 
 tution of society as a colony of workers ? Is it the design of Pro¬ 
 vidence that this great industrial hive is to be helpful to the weak, 
 
33 
 
 the needy, the less-favored, the far-off heathen of every land ? Is 
 this the grand design of industry, or of the exchange of the pro¬ 
 ducts of industry? If so, it will be fulfilled. What if it should be 
 part of the order and method of the science itself, that intellect, 
 in all that it is competent to accomplish separate from the toil of 
 the hand, is to be the gratuitous servant of humanity ? Would it in 
 anywise lessen its true value or take from its dignity? If industry 
 finds its satisfactions in material products, where should intellect 
 find its satisfactions? Did you ever reflect that it is from the till¬ 
 age of the field that the greatest amount of values is realized ? 
 Is the greatest amount of values returned there ? You see, then, how 
 many grave and grand questions there are yet to challenge our 
 attention and investigation. Do you think you can settle them 
 by shelving them ? Are you vain enough to think that questions 
 such as these will remain for ever buried in the dark ? Let us be 
 humble. We know nothing yet as we ought to know. 
 
 Before closing this paper, it is right to state that Mr. Mill seems 
 to have assumed, throughout his writings, the existing relations 
 between capital and industry as the natural foundation on which 
 to rear his entire system of political economy. It is no doubt 
 through this assumption that he has been led to lay down principles 
 which, when really put to the test, are found to be very rickety 
 indeed. It is this which vitiates page after page, and prevents 
 his work being, in any great degree, a reliable guide towards a 
 perfect understanding of the leading elements of political economy. 
 As this science is fast becoming the most important of the day, I 
 think it is of the highest consequence that students in our schools 
 and colleges should be put upon their guard in reading* Mr. Mill’s 
 u Principles,” as a text book. And yet, notwithstanding all this, I 
 hope, and doubt not, that Mr. Mill will long continue to be read. His 
 laborious application; his simple, massive style ; his clear logic; his 
 extensive information; his evident sympathy with workingmen; the 
 master thoughts on some important economic subjects which he 
 has thrown out so far in advance of his day ; and the mass of im¬ 
 portant instruction he has given to the world; must ever entitle him 
 to the gratitude of mankind. And though it is inevitable that the 
 fabric he raised with so much diligence will have to be taken down 
 and rebuilt on a different model, much of the material which he so 
 patiently gathered and so skilfully prepared, will ever continue as 
 a monument to his name. As to living economists, I cannot express 
 half what I feel in regard to the solemn responsibilities of the hour. 
 
 I confess that I am somewhat sorry for capital. It seems such a 
 pity to destroy so pleasant a delusion. It has hitherto passed as a 
 respectable sort of personage. His retainers have, during the last 
 twenty or thirty years, given him some hard knocks. There can 
 be no question as to which side has fared worst in the strife. 
 Capital as well as industry has cudgels in his hand, and sometimes 
 it is worse to be locked out than to be locked in. There has been 
 plenty “ striking ” going, but there can be little doubt which of the 
 two has got the most bruises. The sad thing is that amidst all the 
 din the voice of reason cannot be heard. If capital has truth on its 
 side it will remain—if it is built on error it will pass away. And 
 I can say to both capital and industry that there are more thought¬ 
 ful men than ye wot of pondering over these momentous questions. 
 It is a hopeful sign of the times that there is everywhere abroad a 
 spirit of tree inquiry and scrutiny, a spirit which is growing from 
 
34 
 
 day to day. The capitalist who refuses investigation will only 
 gather around him greater perils. Fori suppose there is nobody so 
 silly as not to perceive that there are perils. If i he economists in their 
 long and labored endeavors, and under the names of capital, credit, 
 and so forth, have conjured up nothing but a spectre to crush the 
 industry of the rac°, and to scare free inquiry, we have only to take 
 the shadow in hand to know what it really is. These sort of things 
 are only fearful in the dark—the light of day puts them all to 
 flight. “ He that doeth truth cometh to the light.” Who can doubt 
 of the ultimate triumph of every vital human interest over error 
 and wrong ? 
 
 It is neither my inclination nor my duty to enter upon a tirade 
 against capital. Railing accusations are generally fruitless things, 
 a id can only react in injury to the cause which we advocate. 
 We must remember that we are all the victims, more or less, of the 
 system under which we have been trained. We cannot charge the 
 capitalist with doing a wrong thing when he hires laboring men, 
 and pays out wages. I do not feel called upon to say that the 
 capitalist is doing a wicked thing when he invests his means in 
 any of the recognized enterprizes of the day. He is perhaps, in the 
 circumstances, doing the best thing possible. I am conscious of 
 the same respect and kindly feeling towards capitalists as towards 
 working men ; and I am aware of the noble and spotless lives led 
 by very many of them. But I think it is of the utmost consequence 
 that both Capital and Industry know exactly where they stand, 
 and what they have to stand upon. Let us have a calm and 
 thorough investigation of the whole subject. The interest of money 
 is not to be weighed for a moment against the interests of truth. 
 We can do without the one—we can never do without the other. 
 The views I have set forth in this paper are worthy of the most 
 careful consideration ; and I hope, moreover, they are able to stand 
 examination. If these views be sound, there is one thing the cap¬ 
 italist can do—he may look with a more favorable and kindly eye 
 on working men, as the real producers of his wealth, and may give 
 to them a larger share than they now enjoy of the produce of 
 their toil. I hardly know anything better which I could recommend 
 capitalists to do. If Corporations had souls —which it is said they 
 have not—I would be inclined to say to them also that there is 
 nothing at any rate which w r ould bring them in more true enjoy¬ 
 ment. Blessed is the hand which relieves poverty, but more blessed 
 still is"the hand which lifts workingmen above poverty. 
 
 It may be said of humanity in general that men born into the 
 world launch upon life under the necessity of earning their 
 bread by the sw r eat of the brow. It is the inevitable condition of 
 existence from which the race can never escape. It is the mark 
 which this old world must carry to its grave. As all must live, so 
 all must labor. Physically a man lives by bread alone. It is from 
 liis own labor, and not from that of his fellows, that he must pro¬ 
 vide for himself food,clothing and shelter. Labor gives the true title 
 to all property, to everything framed by human hands. What 
 comes to you by inheritance, still comes to you, or ought to come 
 to you, with that labor title intact. All that is above and beyond, 
 the" higher and better things, are for the higher and better life. 
 The soil of the hand, the sweat of the brow, the rude bargain¬ 
 ings of commerce, cannot touch them,—they are removed by 
 their very nature beyond the common-place circle of things 
 
35 
 
 merchantable and perishable. For it appears as if no really 
 equitable adjustment could ever be made between the thoughts 
 of the brain and the toil of the hand. It is, as I have al¬ 
 ready said, only when these thoughts of the brain find expression 
 through the labor of the hand, that the products stand on a com¬ 
 mon platform where values can be rightly appraised. Where is the 
 economist who would venture to price , in perishable gold, those high 
 ministries which directly contribute to spiritual culture ? Does it 
 not seem that the higher and more powerful the ministry, the fur¬ 
 ther it is removed, by that very circus tan ce, from the compara¬ 
 tively mean measure of earthly values ? Therefore, although it is 
 within reason that they who minister about holy things should live 
 off the things of the temple, it is not the less true that carnal things 
 reaped can never be the measure of spiritual things sown. For 
 things spiritual can only be reckoned in terms spiritual. It was 
 not the bit of money cast into the treasury which gave it the value: 
 it was that which lay behind which made the very small gift a very 
 large gift in the eye of Him who seeth not as man seeth. Why 
 should the spirit of earthly ambition or gain annoy us with either 
 its computations, its cavillings, or its lamentations, when we 
 choose to break our alabaster box? And herein lies a truth for 
 all workers, whether in the pulpit or the pew, who would forget 
 self in their efforts after the good of their fellow creatures, and 
 who desire to live superior to those low-born motives, which, it is 
 to be feared, too often impel men of great talent and power to sell 
 themselves to “ the highest bidder.” Let earnest and thoughtful 
 men ever keep before them this high ideal, and they shall not fail 
 to leave a lasting impression for good on their own and succeeding 
 generations. The men who have laid the world under the greatest 
 charges have themselves been “ chargeable to no man.” Christian-/ 
 ity itself would have been strangled in its cradle by a modern en-| 
 dowment. It must ever be so. For there does seem, after all, to b(? 
 a kingly sphere, into which things sordid may not enter—where 
 the baubles of earth and the babblings of commerce are alike out 
 of place—a quiet and humble sanctuary consecrated by the great 
 travail of the mind, and where mightier bolts are being forged than 
 have ever rung to the workman’s hammer. 
 
 I confess that the condition of industry in this our boasted age 
 of civilization lies like a heavy burden on my soul. I cannot shake 
 it off. It haunts me night and day. I have no faith that the ther¬ 
 apeutics of modern commerce will ever heal its wounds, or cause 
 life and health to course through its veins. In patient study and 
 painstaking investigation lies much of the renovating power. It 
 may be that we will have to build the wall in troublous times. 
 Surely industry expects of us that we expound the principles of 
 political economy in such a way as to secure to it the fruits of its 
 own toil. The science itself has been handed over to the dominion 
 of mob law, and has become the sport of every scatterbrain who 
 imagines that he has a call to pronounce, at first sight, upon the 
 subject. In this western world we are at this moment flooded with 
 a literature which gives but too certain and sickening evidence of 
 the truth of what I have just stated. I need not waste words in 
 urging upon the cultured men who read these pages the vast im¬ 
 portance of the matters I have brought under review. I have but 
 endeavored, according to my humble ability, to open a door here 
 and there to the great temple of economic truth. How inviting is 
 
 x 
 
36 
 
 the field ! And what a glorious exercise ta both the intellect and 
 the heart to grapple with such mighty problems ! The claims of 
 labor must call forth the wannest sympathies of every true-hearted 
 man. Ought it not greatly to mitigate the rigor of the judgment 
 we are accustomed to pass even upon the lowest and most-aban¬ 
 doned classes of society, when wc consider the character of tlr 
 system of which they are to so large an extent the unhappy victims : 
 Where is the man to refuse a sigh or a-tear over melancholy and 
 broken-hearted toil—over countless millions of our fellow creatures 
 for ever divorced from all that makes life bright and joyous—over 
 the majestic temple of industry in utter desolation and ruin ? I am 
 sure every humane reader must join me in the hope that the day irnr 
 soon arrive when the science of political economy shall be rescued 
 from its present chaos and disorder, and remodelled and established 
 on such a basis that the sad inheritanceTof hopeless and unrequited 
 toil which has been for so many generations transmitted from 
 father to son, may be exchanged for those ample, equitable and 
 sure rewards destined to make millions of hearts happy, and to j 
 throw the light of joy and gladness over every land and into ] 
 every home. 
 
 W ORKS ON THE LABOR AND MONEY! 
 QUESTIONS.— By William Brown. 
 
 1. Thoughts on Paper Currency and Lending on Interest, as affect 
 ing the prosperity of Labor, Commerce and Manufactures 
 
 247 pages.... 75 cts 
 
 2. A New Catechism on Political Economy : 68 pages. 20 ett 
 
 3. No fund in Commerce or Labor for Lending on Interest: 1 
 pages...... lOcts 
 
 4. The Church, our Modern System of Commerce, arid the full)fl 
 
 ment of Prophecy : 24 pages. lOcta 
 
 5, The Claims of Capital considered : 36 pages. lOct j 
 
 Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5 sent, post paid, for 30 cents. . , 
 
 Published by John Lovell, Montreal, and Rouse’s Point, N. 1 
 The u Thoughts,” bound in cloth, can also be had from Messij 
 Sampson Low & Co., London. 
 
 Note. —All letters, newspapers, reviews, Ac., intended for the Authl 
 are requested to be addressed to the care of Mr. Lovell, as above^ Frienj 
 readers can render important assistance by contributions, however sm| 
 in aid of the printing and circulation of these tracts.