But there is another peculiarity in wealth and money: If a wooden or iron “inch” be allowed to rot or rust quietly on some shelf, this “inch” does not represent anything besides this piece of wood or iron. But if we take the mental value of an inch, this unit of one of the measures of space, and use it, with other quantities, in the contemplation of the skies for the solving of an astronomical problem, it gives a prophetic answer that, in a certain place there is a star; this star, may be for years looked for in vain. Was it that the calculation was wrong? No, for after further search with telescopes of greater power, the star is found and the calculation thus verified.
It is obvious that the “unit”—inch—has no value by itself, but is very precious as a unit for measuring the phenomenon of length, which it perfectly represents, and that is why it was introduced.
It is exactly the same with money if the term be rightly understood. Understood aright, money, being the measure and representative of wealth, is in the main, the measure and the representative of dead men's toil; for, rightly understood, wealth is almost entirely the product of the labor of by-gone generations. This product, we have seen, involves the element of time as the chief factor. And so we discover how money, properly understood, is connected with time—the main function of money is to measure and represent the accumulated products of the labor of past generations. Hoarded money is like an iron “inch” upon a shelf—a useless lump; but when used as a measure and representative of wealth rightly understood, money renders invaluable service, for it then serves to measure and represent the living fruit of dead men's toil.
For this reason, it is useless to argue who is the more important, the capitalist who has legal possession of most of the material fruit of dead men's toil, or the laborer who has legal possession of but little of it. In the laborer, we do not now really look for his physical muscular labor alone; for this is replaced by mechanical or animal power as soon as [pg 108] it can be. What we do need from labor, and what we will always need, is his brain—his time-binding power.
The population of the world may be divided into different classes; if the classes are not here enumerated in the customary way, it is because it is necessary to classify human beings, as nearly as possible according to their “power-value.” There is no assertion that this is an ideal classification, but if someone is moved to exclaim—“what a foolish, unscientific division!”—I will answer by saying: “I grant that the division is foolish and unscientific; but it is the only division which corresponds to facts in life, and it is not the writer's fault. By this ‘foolishness’ some good may be accomplished.”
From an engineer's point of view humanity is apparently to be divided into three classes; (1) the intellectuals; (2) the rich; and (3) the poor. This division would seem to be contrary to all the rules of logic, but it corresponds to facts. Of course some individuals belong to two of the classes or even to all three of them, an after-war product, but essentially, they belong to the one class in proportion to the characteristic which is the most marked in their life; that is, in the sense of social classes—based on magnitude of values.
(1) The intellectuals are the men and women [pg 109] who possess the knowledge produced by the labor of by-gone generations but do not possess the material wealth thus produced. In mastering and using this inheritance of knowledge, they are exercising their time-binding energies and making the labor of the dead live in the present and for the future.
(2) The rich are those who have possession and control of most of the material wealth produced by the toil of bygone generations—wealth that is dead unless animated and transformed by the time-binding labor of the living.
(3) The poor are those who have neither the knowledge possessed by the intellectuals nor the material wealth possessed by the rich and who, moreover, because nearly all their efforts, under present conditions, are limited to the struggle for mere existence, have little or no opportunity to exercise their time-binding capacity.
Let us now try to ascertain the rôle of the time-binding class of life as a whole. We have by necessity, to go back to the beginning—back to the savage. We have seen what were the conditions of his work and progress; we saw that for each successful achievement he often had to wrestle with a very large number of unsuccessful achievements, and his lifetime being so limited, the total of his successful achievements was very limited, so that he was able to give to his child only a few useful objects and [pg 110] the sum of his experience. Generally speaking, each successor did not start his life at the point where his father started; he started somewhere near where his father left off. His father gave, say, fifty years to discover two truths in nature and succeeded in making two or three simple objects; but the son does not need to give fifty years to discover and create the same achievements, and so he has time to achieve something new. He thus adds his own achievements to those of his father in tools and experience; this is the mathematical equivalent of adding his parent's years of life to his own. His mother's work and experience are of course included—the name father and son being only used representatively.