wages); or whether he feeds himself and his family, in no way alters their nature as revenue, or affects the fact that this revenue is merely disposable capital.
That (even apart from etymology) cattle are typical examples of capital cannot be denied ("Progress and Poverty," p. 25); and if we seek for that particular quality of cattle which makes them "capital," neither has the author of "Progress and Poverty" supplied, nor is any one else very likely to supply, a better account of the matter than Adam Smith has done. Cattle are "capital" because they are "stock which yields revenue." That is to say, they afford to their owner a supply of that which he desires to possess. And, in this particular case, the "revenue" is not only desirable, but of supreme importance, inasmuch as it is capable of maintaining human life. The herd yields a revenue of food-stuffs as milk and meat; a revenue of skins; a revenue of manure; a revenue of labour; a revenue of exchangeable commodities in the shape of these things, as well as in that of live cattle. In each and all of these capacities cattle are capital; and, conversely, things which possess any or all of these capacities are capital.
Therefore what we find at page 25 of "Progress and Poverty" must be regarded as a welcome lapse into clearness of apprehension:—
"A fertile field, a rich vein of ore, a falling stream which supplies power, may give the possessor advantages
equivalent to the possession of capital; but to class such things as capital would be to put an end to the distinction between land and capital."
Just so. But the fatal truth is that these things are capital; and that there really is no fundamental distinction between land and capital. Is it denied that a fertile field, a rich vein of ore, or a falling stream, may form part of a man's stock, and that, if they do, they are capable of yielding revenue? Will not somebody pay a share of the produce in kind, or in money, for the privilege of cultivating the first royalties for that of working the second; and a like equivalent for that of erecting a mill on the third? In what sense, then, are these things less "capital" than the buildings and tools which on page 27 of "Progress and Poverty" are admitted to be capital? Is it not plain that if these things confer "advantages equivalent to the possession of capital," and if the "advantage" of capital is nothing but the yielding of revenue, then the denial that they are capital is merely a roundabout way of self-contradiction?
All this confused talk about capital, however, is lucidity itself compared with the exposition of the remarkable thesis, "Wages not drawn from capital, but produced by labour," which occupies the third chapter of "Progress and Poverty."
"If, for instance, I devote my labour to gathering birds' eggs or picking wild berries, the eggs or berries I thus