A road is made by a certain quantity of labour,and is then called fixed capital;the constant repairs it needs,however,are a continual making,and the expense incurred by them is called circulating capital.But neither the circulating nor the fixed capital return any profit to the road makers unless there are persons to travel over the road or make a further use of their labour.The road facilitates the progress of the traveller,and just in proportion as people do travel over it,so does the labour which has been employed on the road become productive and useful.One easily comprehends why both these species of labour should be paid --why the road maker should receive some of the benefits accruing only to the road user;but I do not comprehend why all these benefits should go to the road itself and be appropriated by a set of person who neither make nor use it,under the name of profit for their capital.One is almost tempted to believe that capital is a sort of cabalistic word,like Church or State,or any other of those general terms which are invented by those who fleece the rest of mankind to conceal the hand that shears them.It is a sort of idol before which men are called upon to prostrate themselves,while the cunning priest from behind the altar,profaning the God whom he pretends to serve,and mocking those sweet sentiments of devotion and gratitude,or those terrible emotions of fear and resentment,one or the other of which seems common to the whole human race,as they are enlightened and wise,or ignorant and debased,puts forth his hand to receive and appropriate the offerings which he calls for in the name of religion.
A steam engine also is a most complete instrument,but alas!
for the capitalist,it does not go of itself.A peculiar skill is required to make it and put it up,and peculiar skill and labour must afterwards direct and regulate its movements.What would it produce without the engineer?To the stranger who did not possess the engineer's skill,only misery,death and destruction.Its vast utility does not depend on stored up iron and wood,but on that practical and living knowledge of the powers of nature which enables some men to construct,and others to guide it.
If we descend to more minute instruments,and consider such as are guided by the hand,the necessity of skill and labour,and the utter worthlessness of capital by itself,will be still more obvious.It has been asked,what could a carpenter effect without his hatchet and his saw?I put the converse of the question,and ask what the hatchet and saw could effect without the carpenter.
Rust and rottenness must be the answer.A plough or a scythe may be made with the most cunning art,but to use either of them a man must have a droit turn of the hand,or a peculiar species of skill.The shoemaker who can thrust awls through leather with singular dexterity and neatness cannot make any use of a watchmaker's tools;and the most skilful and dexterous maker of plane,saw and chisel blades would find it difficult to construct with them any of that furniture which the cabinet maker forms with so much dispatch and beautiful effect.Almost every species of workman,however,from having acquired a certain dexterity in the use of his hands,and from having frequently seen the operations of other workmen,could learn the art of another man much better than a person who had never practised any kind of manual dexterity,and never seen it practised.But if a skilled labourer could not direct any kind of instruments so well as the man who has been constantly accustomed to use them,it is plain that the whole productive power of such instruments must depend altogether on the peculiar skill of the artisan and mechanic,who has been trained to practise different arts.Fixed capital,of whatever species,then,is only a costly production,costly to make,and costly to preserve,without that particular species of skill and labour which guides each instrument,and which,as Ihave before shown,is nourished,instructed and maintained by wages alone.The utility of the instruments the labourer uses can in no wise be separated from his skill.Whoever may be the owner of fixed capital --and in the present state of society he who makes it is not,and he who uses it is not --it is the hand and knowledge of the labourer which make it,preserve it from decay,and which use it to any beneficial end.
For a nation to have fixed capital,then,and to make a good use of it,three things,and only three things,seem to me to be requisite.First,knowledge and ingenuity for inventing machines.
No labourer would,I am sure,be disposed to deny to these their reward.But no subject of complaint is more general or more just than that the inventor of any machine does not reap the benefit of it.Of all the immense number of persons who have acquired large fortunes by the modern improvements in steam engines and cotton mills,Mr Watt and Mr Arkwright are the only two,Ibelieve,who have been distinguished for their inventions,they also acquired wealth less as inventors than as capitalists.Mr Watt found a capitalist who appreciated his genius,and Mr Arkwright saved and borrowed the means of profiting by his own inventions.Thousands of capitalist have been enriched by inventions and discoveries of which they were not the authors,and capital,by robbing the inventor of his just reward,is guilty of stifling genius.The second requisite for having fixed capital is the manual skill and dexterity for carrying these inventions into execution.The third requisite is the skill and labour to use these instruments after they are made.Without knowledge they could not be invented,without manual skill and dexterity they could not be made,and without skill and labour they could not be productively used.But there is nothing more than the knowledge,skill and labour requisite on which the capitalist can found a claim to any share of the produce.
