It takes away one's breath to have such a concatenation of fallacies administered in the space of half a paragraph. It does not seem to have occurred to our economical reformer to imagine whence his "capital at the beginning," the "leather, thread, &c." came. I venture to suppose that leather to have been originally cattle-skin; and since calves and oxen are not flayed alive, the existence of the leather implies the lessening of that form of capital by a very considerable iota. It is, therefore, as sure as anything can be that, in the long run, the shoes are drawn from that which is capital par excellence; to wit, cattle. It is further beyond doubt that the operation of tanning must involve loss of capital in the shape of bark, to say nothing of other losses; and that the use of the awls and knives of the shoemaker involves loss of capital in the shape of the store of
iron; further, the shoemaker has been enabled to do his work not only by the vital capital expended during the time occupied in making the pair of shoes, but by that expended from the time of his birth, up to the time that he earned wages that would keep him alive.
"Progress and Poverty" continues:—
. . . As my labour goes on, value is steadily added until,
when my labour results in the finished shoes, I have my
capital plus the difference in value between the
material and the shoes. In obtaining this additional
value—my wages—how is capital, at any time, drawn
upon? (p, 34).
In return we may inquire, how can any one propound such a question? Capital is drawn upon all the time. Not only when the shoes are commenced, but while they are being made, and until they are either used by the shoemaker himself or are purchased by somebody else; that is, exchanged for a portion of another man's capital. In fact (supposing that the shoemaker does not want shoes himself), it is the existence of vital capital in the possession of another person and the willingness of that person to part with more or less of it in exchange for the shoes—it is these two conditions, alone, which prevent the shoemaker from having consumed his capital unproductively, just as much as if he had spent his time in chopping up the leather into minute fragments.
Thus, the examination of the very case selected
by the advocate of the doctrine that labour bestowed upon manufacture, without any intervention of capital, can produce wages, proves to be a delusion of the first magnitude; even though it be supported by the dictum of Adam Smith which is quoted in its favour (p. 34)—
. . . "The produce of labour constitutes the natural recompense
or wages of labour. In that original state of things which
precedes both the appropriation of land and the
accumulation of stock, the whole produce of labour belongs
to the labourer. He has neither landlord nor master to
share with him" ("Wealth of Nations," ch. viii).