“But if that only is capital which is produced with a view to further production,” said Mr. Hollins, “I hope there are a good many among your three hundred labourers who are capitalists in this sense.”
“Several,” said Mr. Wallace; “and such I reckon benefactors to society; but there are also many who, having a roof over their heads and something to cover them, are satisfied, and spend all their earnings as fast as they get them in a way which brings no return. Such men become, sooner or later, a burden to the community.”
A deep sigh from Paul made the gentlemen look at him, and they were struck with the melancholy expression of his countenance. When he saw that he was observed, he roused himself and put in his word again.
“I have heard people say you may see plants grow in a thunder-shower, and that the sun sees a baby grow in a summer’s day; but neither is so easy to be seen as the growth of capital. I should like to be by at the opening of a new iron-work,—not with all the helps that we have about us here,—but where people had only their wits and their hands to depend upon. That would be the place to watch capital from its birth, through all the stages of its nursing till it was full grown like yours.”
“Let us hear your notion of the process, Paul.
“I suppose it might occur to a shrewd man, finding a lump of the mineral melted in a very hot fire and hardened again, that it would make better tools than wood. He would heat his lump, and beat it with stones while it was hot, and bend it and notch it and sharpen it in a rude way, till he would be so much better off for tools than his neighbours, that they would try to get some like his. If they could not find any more ironstone, he would use his tools to dig or pick it out of the earth for them.”
“Then, Paul, his tools would be his capital.”
“Certainly: his tools would be capital arising from labour, and tending to further production. His neighbours would pay him well in such produce as they could spare for furnishing them with iron, and then they would all set about making tools. They would soon find that they could get on faster and better by dividing their labour, and so one would keep up the fire, and another would see that the ore flowed into the hole as it should do; and another would beat it while soft, and another would notch it into a saw, and another sharpen it into an axe.”
“Very well, then. As there must be labour before capital, there must be capital before division of labour.”
“To be sure. There would be nothing for them to divide their labour upon if they had not the ironstone, which is their capital as much as the man’s first tool is his.—The more tools they make, the more ore they can procure.”