Book 2 — Footnotes (continued 2)

195.

Thus rye and wheat thrive in many parts of Siberia (Iakutzk) at an annual temperature of - 7.50, while in Iceland no cereals ripen at an annual temperature of + 4°. But in the former place the summer heat is + 16.2°; the winter cold, - 39.2°; in Iceland, + 12° and - 1.6°. In England, the myrtle, laurel, camelia and fuchsia stand the winter well; while the vine no where ripens. On the other hand, Astrakan and Hungary are vine growing countries, although the former is as cold in winter as North Cape, and although the cold is more intense in Hungary than in the Faroe Islands, where neither the oak nor the beech grow any longer. No good wine is produced on the western coast of France, north of 47° 20' north latitude; in Champagne, north of 49°, or in the Rheingau, north of 51°. In Norway, the average heat is greater on the coast than in the heart of the country where, however, grain ripens, while it does not on the coast; for the mildness of the winter, no matter how great, can make no compensation for the want of heat. On the other hand, the cattle on the coast can remain much longer out of doors, and the sea seldom freezes in such a way as to interfere with the fisheries. Blom, Norwegen I, 39. Boussingnault (Economie rurale considérée dans ses Rapports avec la Chimie, II) has made some interesting attempts to calculate by a mathematical process the amount of heat necessary to vegetable, during the period of vegetation. Thus, for instance, wheat requires about 12° (Réaumur) of heat during 140 days; that is, nearly 140 x 12° = 1680° Réaumur. In Venezuela, the sugar cane requires a longer time to grow in a higher and therefore cooler position than in a lower and warmer, and the length of time required is in proportion to the height.

196.

Hence it is that the isothermal lines are not parallel with the equator or with one another. The greater number of these have two northern and two southern summits; the former on the western coasts of Europe and America, and the latter in eastern North America, and in the interior of Asia.

197.

The quantity of rain which falls every year is, at St. Petersburg and Pesth, from 16 to 17 inches; at Berlin 19, Mannheim 21, Tübingen 26: in the interior of France 16-24; on the French coast 25, on the eastern coast of England 24, on the western coast 35, in Milan 36, Genoa 44, on the coast of most tropical lands 70-120. On the political-economical influences of most climates, see Gobbi, Ueber die Abhängikeit der Populationskräfte von den einfachen Grundfstoffen, 1842.

198.

The snow limit at Mageröe in Norway is 2,200, in Iceland 2,900, in the northern Ural 4,500, in the Alps 8,200, in the Caucasus 10,400, and Quito 14,850 feet high. Hence it is that mountainous countries which produce nothing in the north, make magnificent vineyards in warmer countries.

199.

In central Germany, even a second crop can be produced after the corn harvest. In Arabia, the same seed produces three harvests, because the grain which falls at the time of harvesting to the ground, germinates immediately and suffices for new seed. (Niebuhr, Beschreibung, 154.)

200.

Thus in the northern states of the American union, wheat yields a return of only from four to five times the amount sown; in France, 5-6 times (Lavoisier): in Chili, 12 times; in northern Mexico, 17 times; in Peru, 18 and 20 times; in southern Mexico, 25 and even 35 times; in Germany, maize seed yields at best one hundred fold, while in the torrid zone there is a return of from three hundred to four hundred fold, generally.

201.

Andalusian corn produces in the mill only one-half as much bran-waste as Baltic wheat produces. Bourgoing, Tableau de l'Espagne, II, 155. Baltic wheat contains 6-7 per cent, of azote, and Algerian, 20-25 Per cent. (Kabsch, Pflanzenleben der Erde, 1865.)

202.

In Europe the blossoming season is retarded four days for each degree of northern latitude. (Schübler.) As we advance towards the north, the difference becomes less noticeable, but more so as we go towards the south. In mountainous countries a similar difference is observable, produced by a like climatic influence. It is from about 10 to 12 days, for a height of from 500 to 600 feet. (Wolff, Naturgesetzliche Grundlagen des Ackerbaues I, p. 332 ff.) In the cantons, in which the Swiss confederation had its origin, the pasturage of the Alps lasts generally thirteen weeks, but in the higher Alps it lasts only from six to seven weeks. (Businger, C. Unterwalden., p. 52.)

203.

In central Italy, winter wheat may be sown in October, November or December; summer wheat, in February or March. (Sismondi, Tableau de l'Agriculture Toscane, p. 35.) In Judæa, it was possible to harvest figs ten months in the year. (Joseph, Bell. Jud., Ill, p. 10.) On the other hand, there is Jemtland, where the peasant in many places surrounds the northern portion of his cornfield with fagots, and lights them in August when the north wind blows, to protect his land from the frost; and where the expression “green years” is used to designate those in which the harvest has to be reaped before it is ripe. (Forsell, Statistik von Schweden, 24.) In the valuation made of the lands of the kingdom of Saxony, for assessment purposes, the cost of supporting a yoke of oxen in the lowest country is estimated at only three-fourths of what it is in the highest localities, because in the former, 200 work days can be calculated upon in the year, in the latter only 159. In central Russia, the greater part of the labor of agriculture, sowing and harvesting, has to be finished within the space of four months. In central Germany, they are spread over seven months. Other things being equal, seven horses and ploughmen are needed in Russia where only four are called for in central Germany, (von Haxthausen, Studien I, 174.) On the impediments put in the way of agriculture by the climate of eastern Prussia, see Meitzen, Boden und landwirthsch. Verhältnisse des preussichen Staats, 1868, I, Abschn., 6.

204.

“In both hemispheres, the zone in which the temperature decreases most rapidly lies between the 40th and 50th degrees of north latitude. This circumstance must have a happy influence on the culture and industry of the nation inhabiting the neighborhood of that zone. Here is the point where the regions of the vine touch upon those of the olive. Nowhere in the world, do the products of the vegetable kingdom, and the most varied wonders of agriculture, follow with such rapidity on one another. The great variety of products enlivens the commerce and increases the industrial activity of agricultural nations.” (Humboldt.) It is true, however, that tropical countries possess, also, in their mountainous parts, the tierra fria, templada and caliente, superimposed the one on the other.

205.

The aggregate coal supply of Great Britain (1869) was 2,180 millions cwt.; of Belgium (1862), 207 millions; of France (1868) 256 millions; of Prussia (1870), 600 millions, of Austria (1870), including brown lignite coal, 158 millions; of Russia (1868), only a little over 9 millions. The great English coal field, in the counties of Durham and Northumberland, embraces 732 English square miles; that of South Wales, 1,200, with a depth of 95 feet, so that the geographical square mile contains here 679 millions of tons, each of twenty cwt. To obtain the same quantity of combustible material as was furnished to Prussia, in 1865, by its coal, it would be necessary to use up 6,331 square miles of forest, (von Dèchen, in Engel's Zeitschrift, 1867, 258.) The supply of coal is, of course, exhaustible while, for instance, turf-fields replace themselves by slow degrees. Compare Griesbach, über die Bildung des Torfs, in the Göttinger Studien, 1845, vol. I. The importance of the coal-fields of the United States, which are twenty-two times as large as those of Great Britain, in the distant future, cannot be over-estimated.

206.

I need only call attention to the earth-fire (Erdbrand) for the purpose of forcing the growth of garden plants in the neighborhood of Zwickau, which is said to have existed since 1505.

207.

Thus, in Watt's steam engines of the larger kind, an hourly consumption of ten pounds of coal is needed to produce a force equivalent to that of one horse, while in the smallest machines of only one horse power, twenty-two pounds are needed. See Prechtl, Technolo. Encyklopädie, III, 669.

208.

It is easy to see that it is the most important substances needed in industry which are mentioned in this section. Many political economists have considered the principal difference between agriculture and the industries and economies of towns to lie in the contrast here referred to. Thus, A. Sena, Sulle Cause che possono far abbondare li Regni d'oro e d'argento, dove non sono miniere, 1613, I, 3. See the description of the difference between land and machines in Malthus, Principles, III, 5; Senior, Outlines, 86. But it is nothing more than a difference of gradation. Even in the most active of businesses there is a limit which the accumulation of means of production cannot pass without a relative diminution of the income. This boundary is imposed by the limited nature of those organic beings which must contribute to production either actively or passively. Thus, for instance, a manufacturing establishment or commercial business can be enlarged with advantage only so long as it is still possible for one superintendent to conduct it. And so, when cattle are furnished with very abundant and substantial food, a pound of meat costs the producer a much higher price than when they are more moderately supplied: sometimes in the ratio of 1.95:0.98. Boussingault, Economie rurale, II. Where there is absolute over-feeding, the producer must suffer loss. But, even inorganic nature imposes its own limits here; as, for instance, when ships, machines etc., on account of the insufficient strength of the materials of which they are made, cannot be constructed beyond a certain size. But all these limits are much narrower than those imposed by the quality of immovability.

209.

Senior, Outlines, 26, 81 ff. See Stewart, Principles, II, ch. 11; Ortes, E. N., I, 18, II, 18 ff. This most important principle in Political Economy is thus illustrated by John Stuart Mill, Principles, book I, ch. 12. “The limitation to production from the properties of the soil is not like the obstacle opposed by a wall, which stands immovable in one particular spot, and offers no hindrance to motion short of stopping it entirely. We may rather compare it to a highly elastic and extendible band, which is hardly ever so violently stretched, that it could not possibly be stretched any more, yet the pressure of which is felt long before the final limit is reached, and felt more severely the nearer that limit is approached.” This is, if possible, more obvious in building than in agriculture, both as to the construction of new stories and the excavation of deeper cellars.

210.

Ad. Mayer, Das Düngerkapital und der Raubbau (Heidelberg, 1869), sees the only conditions of production which man cannot increase at will exclusively in the sun's rays, the employment of which also depends on the quantity of land. Thus would he explain Senior's law.

211.

See the tables of increase in Cotta, Anweisung zum Waldbau, p. 228. Count Buquoy, Theorie der N. Wirthschaft, p. 54, ridicules the absurd procedure of a great many farmers, as if by forcing the ploughshare deeper into the soil, they could compel it to produce a double return, and asks: if one should dig a square foot of land to the center of the earth and manure it, who would take it off his hands? As to the effect of manure, Kuhlmann's investigations have shown that 300 kilogrammes of guano produced in three years an increase per hectare in the yield, of 2,469 kilogrammes of hay; while 600 kilogrammes produced an increase of only 2,870 kilogrammes. Schübler, found that where salt had been used for manuring purposes, 40 kilogrammes produced a maximum of fertility from which point forward every increase in the amount of salt was attended by diminished returns, and finally led to complete barrenness. See Wolff, Naturgesetzliche Grundlagen, I, 408, 412, 502. Constantly increased irrigation would convert the land into a swamp instead of indefinitely adding to its fertility. Nor can abundant sowing be of any use when it reaches such a point that the plants stand so closely together as to interfere with their proper development.

212.

These differences correspond with the differences in the kinds of deterioration to which land is liable from rivers, floods, lava, etc., soil-exhaustion, and the growing wild of the land.

213.

From a technic point of view, it would, perhaps, be practicable, in most instances, to obtain the phosphoric acid immediately from the land and transfer it to other land; but the relation of the cost to the result makes it impossible from an economical point of view.

214.

It most certainly is always an uncommon advantage that certain kinds of soil, rich in kali and decayed vegetable matter, yield a long series of harvests without the addition of manure, provided, always, that a short interval is allowed to the process of decay to replace the exhausted plant-food. Thus in many volcanic regions. Compare on similar districts in the Deccan: Rilter, Erdkunde, V, 714.

215.

According to Schübler, the absorption of water by 100 parts of earth is, in the case of quartz-sand, 25 per cent. of its weight; for clay, 70 per cent.; for calcareous earth, 85 per cent.; humus, 190 per cent.; and for 100 parts of their value, respectively, 37.9, 66.2, and 69.2 per cent. The consistency of the four kinds of earth, in a dry state, is in the proportion of 0.100, 5, 8.7; their adhesion in a moist state, to iron agricultural implements, is in that of 0.17, 1.12, 0.65, 0.40. Of 100 parts of water mixed with these kinds of earth, the evaporation in four hours, at a temperature of 18° 75' (centigrade) is 88.4, 31.3, 28 and 20.5 per cent, respectively. The diminution of volume when the moist earth dries, under the same degree of temperature, is, 0, 18.3, 5 and 20. Their relative absorption of atmospheric moisture for 48 hours is as 0, 24, 17.5 and 55; their absorption of oxygen in 30 days is respectively 1.6, 15.3, 10.8 and 2.03 per cent.; and, lastly, their heat-holding power is in the ratio of 95.6, 66.7, 61.8, 49.

216.

In Austria, below the Enns, only 3.8 per cent. of the soil is barren; in the Tyrol, 29 per cent.; in Dalmatia, 48.1 per cent. (Springer). In the French Pyrenees, 43 per cent. is considered incapable of cultivation; in the Alps, in Landes and Morbihan, 42 per cent.; in the departments of Nord and Somme, 1.3 per cent. (Schnitzler). Franscini considers 36 per cent. of Switzerland unfit for tillage. The idea “barren” is a very vague one, and hence a comparison of different countries on this point should not be made without great caution.

217.

Wolff, loc. cit., 353 ff. As to the manner in which soil and climate mutually improve or injure one another, see Schwerz, Prackt. Ackerbau I, 12.

218.

In this respect, also, the fundamental difference between agriculture and industry is very important, inasmuch as the products of the former, equal in value to those of the latter, require a very large supporting or bearing surface; those of industry, a very small one. If Nobbe's “water-cultivation” should ever come to assume any great practical importance, agriculture would approach to industry in this respect.

219.

Wolkoff has called special attention to mere emplacement: Lectures d'Economie polítique rationelle (1861), pp. 90 seq., 157 seq. Bastiat's rather broad and enthusiastic assertion, that no mere product of nature possesses value (in contradistinction to utility), an exaggeration of his very honorable contest with the socialists (1848!), is refuted by daily experience, as when, for instance, discoveries are made accidentally of metallic veins, coal-fields etc., which immediately acquire great exchange value.

220.

Aristotle distinguishes between ἀπολαυστικὰ and κάρπιμα. (Rhet., I, 5.)

221.

Humboldt, Essai politique, súr la N. Espagne, IV, 9, in which he estimates the relation of the culture of the banana to that of wheat, in respect of mere quantity, to be as 4,000 to 30,—“probably the best gift of nature to awakening man, and the object of the most ancient cultivation.”

222.

It was said that in Easter Island, three days' labor sufficed for a man's maintenance through the whole year. A similar gift of nature to tropical lands is the date tree. It is turned to so many different uses that the Arabs of the coast of the Persian Gulf say that it is possible to construct a ship, rig it, supply and freight it, from date trees. Houses are built of palm wood, covered with palm leaves, furnished with palm mats, lighted with palm chips, and heated with palm coals. The whole architecture of these countries is fashioned by the date tree. Date wine is the favorite intoxicating beverage. There is a proverb current there that a good housewife can vary the preparation of the date for her guests every day in the month. Even the pulp is eaten. Each tree yields an average of 50-250 lbs. of dates; and a tree may last over 200 years. An acre may contain more than 200 trees. The labor of cultivation is very slight, although it demands more care than the banana. Compare Ritter, Erdkunde, XII, 763. An acre planted with the sago-palm yields as much nourishment as 163 acres of wheat land. (Reise der Frigatte Novara, II, 113.)

223.

See D. Hume, Discourses No. I (On Commerce). While in hot countries “the sun does more work for man, it diminishes human strength itself.” (M. Wirth.) That, however, such people, to their surplus of the natural means of enjoyment and the consequent laziness and absence of care, add the bright side of a joyous disposition, is well shown by Goethe, Werke (16 mo., 1840), XXIII, 246.

224.

Noticed even by Thucyd., I, 2. See also Euripides' comparison of Sparta and Messina, in Strabo, VIII, 366.

225.

We find, in a great many countries, that their northern portions are endowed more sparingly by nature with means of enjoyment (Genussmitteln) than southern portions, but more abundantly with means of acquisition. (Erwerbsmitteln.) Hence, the former are latest to develop; but once developed, they assume a much higher place in civilization than the latter. This is true of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, and the United States, and of North America in general, as compared with South America. Something similar may be seen in the contrast between Austria and Prussia. The latter is colder and less fertile, but far superior to the former in extent of coast, in rivers, and fossilized combustible matter.

226.

The rule is not without its exceptions. Thus, for instance, Borneo and New Guinea are physically very like each other, but zoölogically two different worlds; the former belonging to India and the latter to Australia.

227.

Even language, which is the most general and most accurate expression of the intellectual genius of a people, presents a strikingly analogous contrast in mountainous and coast countries. Thus, compare the Ionic, Latin, Low German, Danish and Portuguese, with the Doric, Oscan, High German, Swedish and Spanish.

228.

See Strabo, II, 126. seq.

229.

The most striking instance, illustrative of the manner in which the nature of a country influences the character of a people is afforded by the difference in the development of the Aryans in India and Persia, especially when their sojourn in the territory of the Indus before that near the Ganges is looked upon as an intermediate stage.

230.

French writers, especially, have exaggerated the influence of nature over man. Thus, Bodin. de Repub. (1584), V, I; Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, XVII, 6. XVIII, 1, 18. Cabanis, Rapport du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme (1805), IX, Mémoire, Influence des Climats. Comte, also, Traité de Législation (1827), is of opinion that “the degree of civilization which a people may attain does not depend on the degree of development of which they are capable by nature, but on that which their geographical situation permits them to attain.” See, also, Herodot., III, 106; Hippocr., De Ære etc., 71; Euripid., Medea, 820 ff.; Plutarch, De Exilio, 13. The proper mean has been found by E.M. Arndt, in his Anleitung zu historischen Characterschilderungen (1810), and by Ritter, and his school. See, also, K.S. Zachariæ, Idee einer volkswirthschaftlichen Geographic als Grundlage der praktischen N. Œkonomie fur jedes einzelne Volk: Vierzig Bücher v. Staate, II, 79. See, also, Turgot, Géographie politique, 1750, Œuvres (ed. Daire, II, 611 ff.); Lueder, Nationalindustrie und Staatswirthschaft, III, 1800 ff.

231.

Malte Brun, Précis. de la Geographie universelle, VI. pr.

232.

Strabo, IV, 178. On the climate of ancient Germany, see Tacit, Germ, 2.

233.

Fraser, Travels in Koordistan and Mesopotamia, II, 5. See, also, the description of ancient Susiana in Strabo XV, 731, with that of the new one by M'Kinneir, Geogr. Memoir of Persia, 92.

234.

Thus, Galenus, De Usu Partium Corporis humani, L. I. The animal nearest to man mentally, the elephant, is also possessed of a member more like the human hand than any other animal. Its trunk was called manus by the Romans. Hence the Indians call the elephant, the animal gifted with a hand. Buffon's view is exaggerated by Helvetius in the interests of materialism. Aristotle, (De partt. anim. IV, 10), opposes the saying of Anaxagoras: διὰ τὸ χεῖρας ἔχειν φρονιμώτατον εἶναι τῶν ζώων ἄνθρωπον. Compare Bell, On the human Hand, 1836.

235.

As to the imperfection of the ordinary division into agricultural, industrial and commercial labor, see John Stuart Mill, I, ch. 2, 9. The division of all labor into mental and physical, is not more satisfactory; for even the basest labor is not wholly physical. See Buckle, History of Civilization, vol. II.

236.

Dioscorides and Galen were acquainted with, at most, 600 plants; Linnæus, with 8,000. About 1812, about 30,000 had been described; in 1837, about 60,000; in 1849, about 100,000. Buckle, History of Civilization etc., II, p. 359.

237.

Industrie extractives, according to Dunoyer. When nature's spontaneous gifts are exhausted, this occupation readily becomes production.

238.

Industrie voituriére, according to Dunoyer; industria traslocatrice in opposition to trasformatrice, according to Scialoja. Ortes distinguishes only four classes: agricoltori, artefici, dispensatori and administratori, or raccoglitori, manifattori, and difensori di bene (E. N. I, 2; III, 14). A. Walker, Science of Wealth (1867), p. 34, knows only three classes: transmutation, transformation, transportation.

239.

This is not to be understood in the sense, that there ever was a period in which these sciences were unknown. We need only mention the position occupied by the priest and knight in the middle ages. But, looked upon as economic labor, intended only for purposes of free commerce, they have become very important only within a relatively recent period of time. Thus, for instance, there was in Lower Austria, in 1866, one lawyer or notary to every 6,569 inhabitants; in Bohemia, to every 14,860; in Galicia, to every 22,361; in the whole of Cis-Leithanian Austria, 12,259. In 1865, there was in Prussia, one to every 11,149; in Bavaria, to every 7,350; in Hanover, to every 4,946; in 1862, in Baden, one to every 4,992; in 1867, in Saxony, one to every 3,048. Hildebrand's Tagebuch, 1868, I, 234. There was in Prussia, in 1871, one doctor to every 3,230 inhabitants; in Berlin, to every 1,100; in Heldesheim, to 1,803; in Cologne, to 2,120, in Marienwerder, to 7,240; in Gumbinnen, to 10,047. Engel, Preuss. Statis. Zeitschrift, 1872, 376. The verb “to plow” is, according to comparative philologists, of more recent origin than “to weave.” (Lassen, Indische Alterth. I, 814 ff.) And yet agriculture, in the sense above indicated, undoubtedly precedes industry.

240.

Observed by Geiler v. Kaisersberg. Compare Schmoller in the Tübinger Zeitschr., 1860, 483. Hour wages occupy a middle place between day wages and piece wages.

241.

Thus the introduction of piece wages into lower Silesia has increased the daily earnings of workmen by one-third, one-half, and even more. Engel's Stastist. Zeitschr. (1868), p. 327. The investigations of the German agricultural congress on the condition of agricultural laborers in the German empire (report of v. d. Goltz, 1875) show that in all Germany on an average, the daily earnings of a contract workman (Accordlöhner) is to the daily summer wages of a day laborer as 15:10 (1420). On the other hand, Brassey, in the construction of a railway, found that the same workmen engaged in grading, digging, etc., cost 18 pence per yard when paid by the day, and 7 pence when paid by the piece. (Work and Wages, 266.) Swiss experience is, that production became 20 per cent. cheaper under the piece wages system. (Böhmert, Beitr., 109.)

242.

According to v. d. Goltz's Enquête, the earnings of workmen by the piece, compared with the wages paid workmen by the day in summer, is especially high in middle Franconia (16.5:10); in the Leipzig circle of the German empire (16.6), in the Braunschweig plain (16.8), within the jurisdiction of Hildesheim (18.1), of the Bavarian Palatinate (18.6), in Rhenish Hesse (23.2), especially low in Stettin (13.2:10), in Stralsund (12.4), in Schleswig Holstein (12), in Osnabrück, (11.7.)

243.

According to v. Flotow, Anleitung zur Fertigung der Ertragsanschlage, I, 80, four days of serf labor are equivalent to only three of a free day laborer. According to v. Jacob, Ueber die Arbeit Leibeigener und freier Bauern (1815), 21, two day laborers are equal to three serfs, and one farm horse is equal to two employed by serfs. It is as impossible to obtain accurate general estimates here, as in the case of slave labor. As a rule, hope is not only a more humane but a sharper spur to action. But if force is employed at all, there is no doubt that the greater it is, the more effectual it is. Wherever the right of corporal punishment has been taken from the masters, the technic value of serfdom has uniformly decreased. In the English West Indies, formerly, philanthropic masters who treated their negroes with unwonted gentleness, obtained from them, as a rule, very poor economic results. While each of the slaves expressed the greatest indignation at the idleness of the others when they had “so good a master,” they were all equally and excessively lazy. The weekly production of a plantation sank rapidly under this system from thirty-three hogsheads to twenty-three, and finally to thirteen. Math. Levis, Journal of a West India Proprietor, 1834; Edinburg Review, XLV, 410. For the same reason, the negroes in the Spanish colonies, who were treated much more gently than those owned by other European nationalities produced much worse work. See, however, Columella, De Re rust., I, 8.

244.

According to Howlett, The Insufficiency of the Causes to which the Increase of our Poor Rate have been ascribed (1788), piece wages had become usual “a few years ago.” Very recently the trades unions have again restricted the system of piece wages (§ 176).

245.

This system is inapplicable in the case of domestic servants (Gesinde) who are a part of the household, and who afford to their masters, besides their services, the advantage of having a person at their disposal always about them, and whose wages are therefore in great part their board and lodging. Still less can it apply to the case of the family physician, whose services consist not simply in writing prescriptions, but who is also the professional family friend. The same may be said of the state official, clergyman etc., from whom it is demanded that he should sacrifice his entire life to the service of the public. Against adopting piece wages in the case of state officials, it may be further urged that no case at law, no act of public life is precisely similar to any other. It cannot be applied to that of soldiers, because they are called upon for action only after a long term of peace, during all of which they must keep themselves in readiness for war. (Schäffle, N. Œk., II, 388.) It has also been the practice of courts, until recently, on account of their dignity, to pay their mechanics not by the piece, wherever that was practicable, but by a fixed salary. An able professor in a university is of use to it not only by his lectures, but by his reputation and example etc.; hence, here, a combination of piece wages and of a regular salary is preferred. As to services, the permanency of which constitutes their essential character, remuneration is also wont to be permanent or hereditary, as in the case of very many public officers, while civilization is as yet unadvanced. Later, in proportion as the progress of civilization makes itself felt, this hereditariness is wont to be confined to the sovereign. For an opposite view, see Boxhorn, Institutt. politt. (1663), 41.

246.

Thus, the Chinese, who, by a ridiculous exaggeration bordering on caricature of many of our recent tendencies, may afford us a warning reflection of ourselves in our present state of civilization, rarely labor efficiently when not watched. Only by means of piece wages or the share-system can they be induced to do good work. R. M. Micking; Recollections of Manilla and the Phillippine Islands, 1851.

247.

Day laborers, for instance, must be watched over during the harvest, to prevent their idling away their time, and piece-workers to prevent their continuing to work in spite of wet weather, binding sheaves, for instance, which causes the sheaves to rot. In England, it is considered almost an impossibility to induce laborers to cut wheat close enough to the soil. (Sinclair, Code of Agriculture, 102.) The haste of piece-workers, in the harvest of the rape, occasions great loss, by the fall of the seed. In Russia the removing of the hide from animals is paid for by the piece, and the laborers injure a very large number of skins in their haste. Steinhaus, Russlands industrielle und commercielle Verhältnisse, 425. Piece-wages are to be entirely discountenanced in the reeling of silk. See Bernouilli, Technologie, II, 215. A yearly salary is to be recommended in the tending of cattle, because here a certain connection (Anschluss) with individuals is desirable. In building trades, contractors in England prefer a regular salary; but they employ model workmen, the so-called “bell horses,” to whom they pay a large salary, and who keep the others on the strain by their example, and who on that account are very much hated by their colleagues.

248.

Adam Smith, W. of Nations, I, ch. 8. Howlett, also, l. c., thinks that piece-wages increase the earnings of workmen, but at the expense of their capacity for constant labor. Count Görtz, in his Reise, 328, relates with what fatal effect piece-work in Demarara tells on white laborers and their horses. After the February Revolution, Parisian workmen demanded the abolition of piece-wages, and obtained it in several manufactories. Revue des deux Mondes, March 15, 1848.

249.

In several Swiss factories, understrappers receive a salary, while monteurs work by groupe-contract. (Böhmert, Arbeiterverältnisse und Fabrikeinrichtungen der Schw., II, 70.) Sub-contracting, where the contract is generally made with only one person, for the most part of more than average capacity, and this latter contracts with other workmen on his own account entirely, is considered by philanthropic employers of labor as one of the worst kinds of remuneration. The more democratic system of gang-contract is much better, although even here, it is very easy for the weaker members of a good gang to overwork themselves. (Edinburg Review, October, 1873, 365.)

250.

Especially important in chemical factories. The expense of greasing on the Rhenish railways fell, through premiums offered as rewards for saving, from 27,000 thalers to 5,000, in spite of an increase in the amount of traffic. (v. Mangoldt, Volkswirthschaftslehre, 349.) This was, besides, the most effectual way of controlling the theft of material.

251.

In the cachelot fishery, the captain receives one-sixteenth, the master, one twenty-fifth, the second master, one thirty-fifth, the boatswain, one-sixtieth, each sailor, one eighty-fifth of the profit. (Humboldt, N. Espagne, IV, 10.) This system is very common in North America. See Carey in J. S. Mill's Principles, V, ch. 9, 7. In heathen Iceland, mariners were always paid a certain quota of the profits. Leo, in Raumer's historischem Taschenbuch, 1835, 524. The same was often the case in China. McCulloch, Comm. Diction. v. Canton. In England, its employment was rendered very difficult by the laws of partnership, which made each individual, except in great chartered societies, responsible for all kinds of debts contracted by the rest of the firm. J. S. Mill, B. IV, ch. 7, 5.

252.

The house painter Leclaire, in Paris, obtained very high results in this respect. Leclaire, Répartition des Bénéfices du Travail, 1842. He retained for his own services as contractor the sum of 6,000 francs, and paid each workman the salary he had hitherto received. What remained was, at the end of the year, equally divided among all. Leclaire assures us that he was always satisfied with the system. The paying of a proportion of the general profits to laborers is advisable only in case their ability of surveying the whole is not much inferior to that of their employers. Where a special proportion is paid, in special branches of business, it is sufficient if their supervision extends over that particular branch. But a sharing in the profits of business always supposes a corresponding supervision of the business itself, and also the keeping of accounts.

253.

A very good remedy against indigence among the lower classes. (Umpfenbach, National Œkonomie, 1867, 214.) But whether it will ever be possible to make the remuneration of the navvy or that of a type-setter depend on the final success of his work, qnœre.

254.

Tournefort, speaking of the fatalism of the Turks, says that they always and everywhere leave the world as they found it. According to their own proverb, no grass grows again where the Osman has set foot.

255.

The experiments made with the dynamometer in 1800 ff. show that the average force manuelle of an inhabitant of Van Dieman's Land is to that of an inhabitant of New Holland, of Timor, of a French marine, and of an English colonist in Australia, in the ratio of 50, 51, 58, 69, 71 kilogrammes. Péron, Voyage de Découverte aux Terres australes, 2d ed., II, 417. It was found more recently in the American army, that the average lifting-power of white soldiers was 314 to 343 -lbs.; of white marines, 307; students, 308; negroes, 323; mulattos, 348; and Indians, 419. Gould, Investigations in the Military and Anthropolog. Statistics of American Soldiers, 1869, 458, seq. According to English manufacturers, an English laborer accomplishes almost as much again as a French one(?), and the latter in turn more than an Irishman. An English contractor, who had worked in French manufactories, expressed his opinion concerning the French to this effect: “It cannot be called work they do; it is only looking at it and wishing it done.” Senior, Outlines, 149. Thus, for instance, a good English spinner with a machine of 800 spindles could produce 66 lbs. of yarn, No. 40, while a Frenchman could produce only 48 lbs. (M. Mohl, Reise durch Frankreich, 535; compare Dingler, Polyt. Journal, I, 63 seq.) That the Americans also are inferior to the English in strength and dexterity is attested by the American Hewitt. See Brentano, Arbeitergilden, II, 231. A Berlin wood-sawyer accomplished as much in ten days as a West Prussian from Labiau in twenty-seven days. J. G. Hoffmann. English farmers on the Hellespont prefer to pay Greek laborers £10 per year “besides their keep,” rather than £3 to Turkish laborers. (Lord Carlisle, Diary in Turkish and Greek Waters, 1854, p. 77 seq.) In Paulo-pinang, the Malayan agricultural laborer receives $2-½ per month, the Malabar, $4, the Chinese, $6; for which compensation they work respectively 26, 28 and 30 days. Ritter, Erdkunde, v, 54.

256.

Little light can be thrown on this subject by a comparison of different countries. Thus, in France, there are 614 persons in every 1,000 examined fit for military service; in Bavaria, 705; in Denmark, 523; in Austria, 498; in Prussia, 284; in Saxony, 259; in England, where the conscription is from among the lowest classes, 665; and in Württemberg, 490. (Wappäus, Allg. Bevölkerungsstatistik, II, 71, 140.) Massy, Remarks on the Examination of Recruits, 1854. (Memminger, Würt. Jahrb., 1843, 103.) The comparison of different parts of the same state is much more instructive. Thus, in Saxony, cities afford only 197, and the flat country only 265 per 1,000 (Sächs. statist. Ztschr., 1856, No. 4 ff.); and in France there are among those of illegitimate birth a very large number unfit for military service. (Journ. des Econ., 1850, XXV, 69.) According to the Austrian Annual of military statistics, there were in 1870, on an average, throughout the entire monarchy, 211 per 1,000 of those liable to enter the ranks of the military, fit for service; in the Innsbruck command, 325; in Lemberg, 179.

257.

M. Chevalier, Cours, I, 115. Adam Smith, B. I, ch. 8, noticed the great industry of well paid workmen. Among the uneducated, labor must almost necessarily be repulsive in proportion as it is illy remunerated.

258.

Thus A. Young remarked that wages in Ireland are wretchedly low, while labor is far from being cheap. In his “Evidence in Respect to the Occupation of Land in Ireland,” II, 135, he says that a Scotch day laborer at 1s. per day is cheaper than an Irish day laborer at ½s. According to McCulloch, “Statis. Account of the British Empire,” I, 666, industrial labor in Germany and France is dearer than in England, because in the former countries there are, ceteris paribus, twice as many laborers employed in most manufactures. See Senior, Lectures on Wages, 1830, 11, and the reports of the committees of parliament, passim on French manufactures (1825). The same has been experienced in the agricultural history of Schleswig-Holstein. See Hanssen, Archiv. der Politisch. Œk. IV, 421. La main d'œuvre est chère en Russie dès qu'il s'agit d'une certaine capacité et d'un certain degré d'instruction professionelle, tandis que celle de l'ouvrier ordinaire n'est nulle part aussi bas. (Tégoborsky.)

259.

Thus even Columella, R. R. I, 9. J. S. Mill, Principles, I, ch. 7, 5.

260.

Thus, for instance, the Lex Visigoth., VIII, 4, 16, graduates the fine to be paid by the murderer according to the age of his victim. It increases up to the 20th year in the case of males, and diminishes after the 50th. In the case of females, the maximum is attained between the ages of 15 and 40. Similarly even Moses, Book III, 27.

261.

As to what concerns the two sexes, the force rénale of adult males is twice that of females in the human species. The difference between them in youth is not so great. The force manuelle of the two sexes at the age of 30 is as 9:5. (Quételet, Sur l'Homme II, p. 73 ff.) The numerical ratio of one sex to the other varies but little among those nations which have attained a certain degree of civilization. See infra, § 245.

262.

It is of great importance to calculate here the number of days in the year in which the laborer is compelled to be idle on account of sickness. Fenger, (Quid faciant ætas annique tempus ad frequentiam et diuturnitatem morborum, Hafniæ 1840), finds the following result: Between 15 and 19 years, 7.2 days. Between 35 and 39 years, 7.8 days. Between 20 and 24 years, 10.3 days. Between 40 and 44 years, 8.3 days. Between 25 and 29 years, 9.5 days. Between 45 and 49 years, 11.6 days. Between 30 and 34 years, 7.6 days. Between 50 and 59 years, 14.1 days. According to Villermé, in the Annales d'Hygiène, II, At 60 years, 16 days. At 67 years, 42 days. At 65 years, 31 days. At 70 years, 75 days. The latter table is the result of a comparison made of the tables of seventy Scotch mutual aid societies. Compare Digler, Polyt. Journal, XXIV, 168.

263.

Tacit., Germ., 14. Leo, in Raumer's Taschenbuch, 1835, 418. Maxime sua esse credebant, quæ: ex hostibus cepissent. (Gajus IV, 16.) Roman auction sub hasta! Similar views obtained among the Thracians. See Herodot., V, 6. In Sparta, even in the time of Agesilaus, economic labor was considered unworthy of a free man, (Plutarch, Ages, 26); while the Athenians, from the time of Solon, punished idleness, and from that of Pericles “knew no other festival but attending to their business.” Thucyd., I. 70. For some happy observations on this subject, see Riehl, Die deutsche Arbeit, 1861.

264.

Compare Erasmus Colloq. (ed. Stallb.), 21 ff., 213 ff., 392 ff.

265.

Temple learned from the Dutch of his own age that the time of industrious men is the greatest home commodity of a country. (Works I, 129.) “A trader's time is his bread.” (Sir M. Decker, Essay on the Decline etc., 1744, 24.) Walpole, in his Testament politique II, 385, speaks of the inferiority of the Roman Church in this respect. I would allude to the medieaval prohibition “to sell time” as one of the chief grounds of the prohibition of usury. (See Roscher, Gesch. der N. Œk. in Deutschland, 7.) Economia di tempo equivale a prolungamento di esistenza. (Soialeja.)

266.

Douville, Voyage au Congo I, 239. See v. Haxthausen, Studien, II, 439; W. Jacob, Production and Consumption of the precious Metals, II, 209. The division of the day into hours dates from the time of the sun dials of Alexandria. It was not known in Rome until after the year of the city 491. (Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, I. 301.)

267.

Pinckard, Notes on the West Indies, 1806, II, 107. In Spain it looks as if no one in the streets was in a hurry. What a contrast between the sans souci gait of persons at bathing places and the resorts of pilgrims and the precipitate haste in commercial centres!

268.

Meyendorff, Voyage à Boukhara, 246.

269.

The history of this idea affords a remarkable example of the confusion produced by the employment of scientific terminology in daily life. Until within a short time every possible meaning of the word capital was to be found in the dictionary of the French Academy, its scientific politico-economical meaning alone excepted. During the middle ages, the Latin capitale was used to signify both loaned money and cattle. (Ducange, s.v.) When culture was at its highest in Greece, Demosthenes entertained very good ideas of the nature of capital which he sometimes calls ἀφορμὴ, sometimes ἔρανος, the meaning of which he extends also to the incorporeal capital of a good reputation. (Adv. Mid., 574; pro Phorm, 947.) The same may be said of the Roman in conception of peculium. See Hildebrand's Jahrbb., 1866, I. 338. On the beginnings of the present idea of capital among the later schoolmen, see Funck, Tübinger Ztschr., 1869, 149. The diary of Lucas Rems, 1491-1541 (ed. Greiff, 1861), calls commercial capital, in most instances, the chief good (Hauptgut) p. 37; also Cavedal. The words money and capital, interest and the price of money are now confounded in daily life, as they were formerly by most writers. In the 17th century, Child and Locke may be mentioned as instances. Hobbes had some faint notion of the productive power of capital. See Roscher, Zur Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 49, 60, 102. Thus, also, in the 18th century, Law, Sur l'Usage des Monnaies, 697; Trade and money (1705) 117; Mélon, Essai politique sur le Commerce, 1734, ch. 22; Galiani, Della Moneta, IV, 1, 3; Blackstone, Commentaries, 1764, II, 456; Genovesi, Economia civile, II, 2, 18, 13; Stewart, Principles, IV, 1, ch. IV; Verri, Meditazioni, XIV; Büsch, Geldumlauf, V. 14; A. Young, Political Arithmetics (1774), 1, ch. 7. Hume, on the other hand, Discourses (1752), No. 4 (on interest), shows, that the rate of interest is dependent, not as Locke supposed, on the abundance or scarcity of money, but on the state of profit and on the relation between the demand and supply of capital. Similarly, J. Massie, An Essay on the governing Causes of the Rate of Interest (1750). Quesnay, Dialogue sur le Commerce, 173 (ed. Daire), shows that he had a very clear conception of the operation, and of the principal component parts of capital. Turgot, Sur la Formation et la Distribution des Richesses, § 14, 54-79, came very near the truth, and yet missed it. He recognized the necessity of advances which, as a rule, are the result of saving, in every case of production. He also distinguishes in the product of the soil, besides the produit net and the subsistance du laboureur, the profit of the latter. He likewise points out a great number of differences between the “price of money” considered in its relation to trade, and in its relation to loans. He explains the interest on capital, as Schröder, in his Schatz-und Rentkammer, 231, and Benjamin Franklin, in his Inquiry into the Nature of a Paper Currency (1729) had done before, by the fact that the owner of capital can purchase a piece of land with his capital, and thus draw an income without working. Money, he said, was indeed not productive, but neither was any other thing that could be loaned or leased, with the exception of land and cattle. Adam Smith deserves the greatest credit for his analysis of the idea of capital, although he opposes “capital” to what the Germans call capital-in-use, the “stock for immediate consumption.” When Canard, Principes d'Economie politique (1801) and J. B. Say, Cours pratique, 1828, I, 285, included man's power of labor in capital, they took a retrograde step. “Labour is Capital, primary and fundamental.” Colton, 275. Every grown-up individual, says McCulloch, Principles, 1825, II, ch. 2, may be looked upon as a machine which has cost several years of continued care and a considerable sum for its construction. It is only another side of this same perversity, when McCulloch seeks to force the results produced by animals and machines into the definition of labor. Schlozer, Anfangsgründe (1805), I, 21, goes so far as to call the soul, raw material, which receives productive power from the labor of the teacher! For a calculation of the money value of man in the different ages of life, see Statis. Journ. XVI, 43 ff. See, on the other hand, Malthus, Definitions, ch. 7; and Rossi, in the Journal des Economistes, VI, 113. Nor does the view of Ganilh, Systèmes d'Economie politique (1809), I, 243; of Ad. Müller, Concordia, 93 ff., 211; of Hermann, “Staatswirth” Untersuchungen, No. 3; of Dunoyer, Liberté du Travail, L. VI; of Bastiat, Carey and others, who include pieces of land in themselves under the head of capital, seem to be better founded. Hermann defines capital the durable basis of every utility possessed of value in exchange. Schäffle reckons land as nature offers it to us, among free goods. From the moment that labor and capital are spent upon it, it becomes immovable capital, but he concedes that it still preserves many essential points which distinguish it from other capital. (N. Œk. Theorie der ausschliessenden Absatzverhältnisse, 1867, 65 ff., 89 ff.) These differences appear to me to be still more important than that which land and capital have in common; especially as the historic development of their relations proceeds for the most part in opposite directions. Thus, for instance, as civilization advances, land is wont to become dearer and capital cheaper. How difficult would it be to introduce clearness into the ideas of intensive and extensive agriculture, if land were accounted capital! And it is not only always theoretically, but also very often, in practice, possible to separate the value of a given piece of land from the most durable capital-improvements (Kapitalmeliorationen) made on it. It is only necessary to call to mind the area of buildings.

270.

Marx makes a very arbitrary assertion when he says that only the capital operating in trade, and even only that operating in trade where money is used as the instrument of exchange, can properly be called capital; and that, therefore, the modern biography of capital dates only from the 16th century, (Das Kapital I, 106 ff.)

271.

See, on the other hand, Wolkoff, Lectures d'Economie politique rationelle, 167.

272.

Hermann (II ed., 238 ff.) distinguishes especially preparatory contrivances auxiliary to labor, such as stationary structures etc., vessels, tools, machines and instruments for measuring etc.

273.

Thus, for instance, the plow and the gun are machines, the spade and the blow-pipe are tools. A hammer may be considered as a hard, insensible fist; the bellows as a pair of very strong and durable lungs. Tongs take the place of fingers, just as a spoon does of the empty hand, and the knife the place of the teeth. A great number of machines, on the other hand, may be compared to a complete workman. Thus, the action of the mill which grinds grain has very little resemblance to the blowing of the wind or the running of the water, whereas the rising and falling of the pestle in the small mortar for throwing grenades corresponds to the motion of the arm. (Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 125.) The infinite number of functions of which our members are capable is related to their inability to attain alone the greater number of their ends. Hence animals which require no tools can undertake to achieve very few things. “Man is a tool-making animal.” (B. Franklin.)

274.

This is seen most clearly in the history of the grinding of corn. In the time of Moses, and even of Homer, there were only hand-mills, and originally only mortars. Later, mills set in motion by horse-power were employed. Shortly after Cicero's time, mills driven by water-power came into use. Brunck, Analecta, II, 119, Ep. 39. Mills built on pontoons do not date farther back than the time of Belisarius. Wind-mills have been known since the ninth century; Dutch wind-mills, only since the middle of the 16th century. See Beckman, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Erfindungen II, I ff.

275.

Compare Plato, Polit., 280.

276.

Thus, Ganilh, Théorie de l'Economie politique I, 133, calls the knowledge, talents and probity of merchants, as well as their reputation, valuable parts of their capital in trade. See, also, Möser, Patriot. Ph. II, 26. See some happy observations on the intellectual capital of nations, as consisting of “known and unknown preparatory labor through their history,” in Lotze, Mikrokosomos II, 353 seq.

277.

Compare Dietzel, System der Staatsanleihen (1856), 71 ff. And, earlier yet, Ad. Müller had looked upon taxes not in the light of an insurance premium, but as “the interest of the invisible and yet absolutely necessary intellectual capital of the nation.” (Elemente, III, 75.) Of course, the State is much more than a species of capital; just as a Gothic cathedral is something more than a piece of masonry, but does not on that account cease to be a piece of masonry.

278.

J. B. Say, Traité d'Economie Politique I, ch. 10. Only think of what is known in physiology as the change or transformation of matter (Stoffwechsel!).

279.

Productive capital has been rendered into German by the word Erwerbstamm, by the author of “Staatswirthschaft nach Naturgesetzen,” 1819. Malthus, Definitions, ch. 10, and Rau, Lehrbuch, I, § 51, call productive capital alone, capital. According to M. Chevalier, goods lose their quality of capital as soon as they come into the hands of a consumer. Schäffle, N. Œk., II, aufl., 59, calls capital in use Genussvermögen (resources intended for enjoyment) and productive capital, Kapitalvermögen (capital-resources). On the other hand, J. B. Say, Traité, I, 13; McCulloch, Principles, II, 2, 3, Hermann, Staatswirthschaft. Untersuchungen, p. 60 ff., and v. Mangoldt, Volkswirthschaftslehre, 122, divide capital into capital in use and productive capital, according as it provides the possessor with that which he may turn to account directly or indirectly by becoming the owner of goods through its means. Aristotle distinguishes between ὄργανα and κτήματα, the former relating to ποίησις; for instance, a shuttle; the latter to πράξις, as, for instance, bedding and articles of dress. (Polit., I, 2, 5.)

280.

Thus, for instance, class A embraces parks and forests; B, theaters, churches, manufactories, arsenals, granaries, public walks and roads. Walks can, besides, be used for the cultivation of fruit, and roads for pleasure trips.

281.

Translated “capital de consommation” by Wolowski, p. 96 of his Roscher's Principles.—Translator's note.

282.

Dead, or better, dormant capital is such productive capital as, for the time being, remains unused, and which, therefore, does not yield even personal enjoyment. The sum total of this kind of capital is very much diminished by the agency of savings banks. Loaned capital which has been employed unproductively evidently constitutes no longer a part of the wealth of a people. See infra, § 189.

283.

Wolkoff is so far right, when in his Lectures, p. 142, he calls the return of capital in use not revenu, but déstruction graduelle. Schäffle is right, too, and entirely so, when he says that only such an increase of the property, intended for enjoyment simply, is anti-economic, as does not make the personal capacities of labor (Arbeitsvermögen) as much more productive than they would otherwise be. N. Œk., II, aufl., 224.

284.

Humboldt, N. Espange, II, ch. 17; v. Schlözer, Anfangsgründe, II, 109. Ausland, 140, No. 313. On the extraordinary wealth of even Russian peasant women in pearls, see v. Haxthausen, Studien, 87, 309.

285.

Townsend, Journey in Spain, I, 115, 310. In the patriarchal age of the Jews, there was a relatively very large quantity of ornamental objects in gold and silver: Michælis, De Pretiis Rerum apud Hebræos, in the Comm. Soc. Götting., III, 151 ff., 160. Conservative Sparta, in the middle age of its history, was certainly not rich, and yet it had more gold and silver than any other Grecian state: Plato, Alcib., I, 123. According to St. John, The Hellenes, III, 142, the ancients had relatively much more of the precious metals in the form of objects for ornament than the moderns. The Romans, with their usual good sense, did not make use of silver as an article of luxury until they had attained great wealth. See Cato, R. R., ch. 23, and Seneca, De Vita beata, ch. 21. Then the Carthaginian ambassadors railed at their hosts because they found the same pieces of table silver in all the houses to which they were invited. The younger Scipio, even, did not possess more relatively than 32 pounds of silver ware. Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, II, 383. The relatively great importance of the stores for domestic use, nevertheless, runs through the whole of Roman history. The title de penu legato, in the Pandects (Digest, XXIII, 9), points to this, during the reign of the emperors, and in earlier times, the derivation of penates from penu. See Rodbertus, in Hildebrand's Jahrbuch, 1870, I, 365. Immense importance of the ring in the old north countries: Weinhold, Altnord. Leben, 184 ff. The age of chivalry was very rich in silver plate, cups, basins, etc. Büsching, Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, II, 137. Anderson, Origin of Commerce, a. 1386. Lord Burleigh, in the age of queen Elizabeth, left after him between fourteen and fifteen thousand pounds sterling in silver ware; that is almost as much as the rest of his whole estate; and, it would seem, that for a man of his rank, even this was not considered a great deal. Collins' Life of B., 44. According to Giustiniani, cardinal Wolsey owned articles of silver to the value of 1,500,000 ducats, and the greater number of the lords of the time were equally well provided with them.

286.

The Bedouins are fond of decorating their wives and children with all the jewels that they possess, both on holidays and other days, so that they sometimes have four or six bracelets on each arm and fifteen ear-rings in each ear. Burckhardt, Bemerkungen, 188. Wellsted (Roederer's translation), I, 224. In Asia Minor, girls wear their whole dowry in the shape of personal ornaments. Belgiojoso, Revue des deux Mondes, Feb. 1, 1855. In East India even the most wretched towns have their silver workers. The emirs of Scinde, with an annual income of £300,000, had a treasure worth £20,000,000, nearly £7,000,000 of which were in jewels. Ritter, Erdkunde VII, p. 185. On the upper Ganges more jewels and other ornaments are worn than on the lower, where the wealthy prefer to spend their capital on landed estates. Ritter, VI, 1143.

287.

The first beginnings of this division are to be found in Quesnay (Analyse du Tableau économique, 1758), in which he develops the difference between avances primitives and avances annuelles. See also Adam Smith, W. of N., II, ch. 1, who, however, reduces the difference between them mainly to the relations of possession, and hence includes grain and seed in fixed capital. Hermann, Staatsw. Untersuch., 269 ff.; Ricardo, Principles, ch. 1, sec. 2; Schmitt-henner, Staatswissenschaften, I, 387, divides capital into I, infungible, that is, 1, fixed in the strict sense of the word; 2, transportation-capital; II, fungible, 1, transformable capital; a, material (raw material, auxiliary material etc.), b, formed products; 2, circulating capital; a, wares; b, money. A. Walker, S. of W., 57, calls circulating capital that which may be easily transferred from one branch of production to another; fixed, that which can be used with advantage only for the purpose for which it was originally intended.

288.

Old wood-work is burned; old iron utensils sold; also houses when pulled down. Emminghaus, Allg. Gewerbelehre, 1868, 175.

289.

If the Mongols, for instance, should despoil China of all its moveable property with the exception of its buried money, its immovable property would become productive only from the time that that money would be used to secure other moveable articles. In any case, the production would be proportioned only to the borrowed seed, cattle, etc. (Sismondi, Richesses commerciale, 1803, I, p. 61.)

290.

That the Athenians left everything in the lurch to oppose Xerxes, much more readily than under Pericles, even, the flat country of Attica. Büchsenschütz (Besitz und Erwerb im griech. Alterthum, 589) explains by the fact that in the interval between the two periods, fixed capital increased largely. In rude ages under the appellation of a community or nation was understood a number of men; and the state, while its members remained, was accounted entire. With polished and mercantile states, the case is sometimes reverted. The nation is a territory cultivated and improved by its owners; destroy the possession even while the master remains, the state is undone. Ferguson, Hist. of civil Society, V, 4; v. Mangoldt, Volkswirthschaftslehre, 159. Fixed capital is not so sure of being completely used up as circulating. On this point see Schäffle, N. Œk., 53.

291.

If the aggregate productive activity of man be designated by the word labor (just as everything produced on a piece of land is inaccurately called its product), then all capital may be considered as the unconsumed result of labor. The recent socialistic theory that considers capital as the wages which have been earned but not paid, is a gross misconception of this truth. This is the origin only of the capital of oppressors and deceivers, and of theirs only in part. See infra, § 189.

292.

“While we are clothed in our winter garments, the spring stuffs are already in the shops of retail dealers; the light material of next summer's wear is already manufacturing, and the wool for our next winter's clothing spun.” Think of the study in advance which the physician must have gone through, whom we summon to us at a moment's notice! Menger, Grundsätze, I, § 33. seq.

293.

Thus in dangerous callings, as for instance, among soldiers and sailors, there is very little saving. The same may be said of times of plague. See J. Rae, New Principles on the Subject of Political Economy, 1834.

294.

That we keep our property under lock and key, while it was customary in Plato's time to seal it up, is in itself a great advance. See Becker, Charicles, I, 202 seq. Earlier yet, artificial knots were used. Homer, Odyss. VII, 443.

295.

Compare Hearne, Reise, nach Prinzwalesfort, 43, 58, 119. Barrow von Sprengel, 282. Humboldt, Relation historique, II, 245. Ausland, 1844, No. 359; 1845, No. 84. Stein-Wappüus, Handbuch der Geographie, I, 310. For proof that the clergy by preaching self denial contributed largely to the creation of capital in the earlier part of medieval history, see Guórard, Polyptiques d'Irminon Préf., 13.

296.

On the inevitableness of slavery, where capital is needed, and no one cares to save, see de Metz Noblet, Phénomènes économiques, I, 306.

297.

The origination of capital by “social connexions” (gesellschaftliche Zusammenhänge) Lassalle (Bastiat-Schultze, 92, 98) exaggerates into the absurdity that no capital was ever saved. This is in part related to his confounding land with capital (103 seq.). On the other hand, P. L. (v. Lilienfeld), Gedanken über die Staatswissenschaft der Zukunft (1873), distinguishes between the external and internal creation of capital in human society; the latter based on the condition of every organic being, by virtue of which the present is generated by the past, and generates the future. The intercellular substance of plants, the honey-comb of bees, and the blood in the animal body, correspond to the capital of a nation.

298.

Hermann, St. Untersuchungen, 289 ff.; List, System der politischen Œkonomie, I, 325 ff. Thus, for instance, capitalization among a race of hunters may be continued longest by the creation of herds; that of a race of shepherds by the building of houses, and by land-improvements; that of an agricultural people by the establishment of trades, artificial roads, etc. As to how, in general the accumulation of goods to any great extent, supposes exchange, and as to how, first of all, with exchange through the existence of a superabundance wealth may originate, see Hermann, loc. cit., II, Aufl., 25 ff.

299.

The annual increase of the capital of France during the later years of Louis Philippe's reign, was estimated at from 200 to 300 million of francs; during the best years of Napoleon III's reign, at 600 million. Journal des Econ., Nov., 1861, 170. The capital of the British empire, judging from the statistics of the income tax, increased from 1843 to 1853, in Great Britain alone, at least £42,000,000 yearly; from 1854 to 1860, in the whole empire, at least £114,000,000; and in 1863 alone by £130,000,000. London Statis. Journal, 1864, 118 ff. A war carried on on English soil would doubtless be more destructive of capital than one waged in Russia; but Russia would recover from one like that of 1854-55 with much greater difficulty because of the small tendency of its people to amass capital. In countries in which the middle classes preponderate, the influence of the amassing of capital on foreign politics is one that favors peace. In despotic or democratic countries, it may as readily favor war.

300.

The “absolute formation” of capital above described is, of course, the only one in the general economy of mankind. In the economy of individuals, we frequently meet with another which is only “relative,” as when the increase of one's resources is attended by as great or even greater decrease of another's. This is the case, for instance, where privileges or monopolies are granted. The same phenomenon is found also in the intercourse of economies of different nations. Supra, § 64.

301.

Thus Cicero, De Off., II, 3, 4. Nature may indeed produce mere value in use without the coöperation of labor, in the narrow sense of the word; as, for instance, a forest which protects a district from avalanches etc. But “everything which has been transformed into goods tends constantly to return to its natural state, and to withdraw itself from the life of goods.” Stein, Lehrbuch.

302.

Compare List, System der Polit. Œkon. But see also the very fine discussion of J. S. Mill, Principles, IV, ch. VI, 2, on the dreariness of nature, when taken exclusive possession of by man; “with every rood of land brought into cultivation which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture plowed up; all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man's use, exterminated as his rivals for food; every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow, without being eradicated as a weed, in the name of improved agriculture.”

303.

In Paris, in 1820, the necessary tools of a rag-gatherer cost 6-¼ francs. Garnier, Elements d'Econ.-polit., 43.

304.

It is not to be overlooked that all labor expended for a distant end also falls under the head of capital. See Droz, Economie politique, 1829, I, 6.

305.

For a good exposition as to how England has need of more agricultural products, the East Indies of more capital, and the West Indies of more labor, see Fawcett, Manual of P. E., 110.

306.

It is a very significant fact, that, at present, in certain European countries, in Germany for instance, the laborer is called a taker, and the capitalist a giver of work. The expressions employed by Canard, Say and Hermann, teach a similar lesson.

307.

Schäffle, Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 124 seq.

308.

It is evident, that, absolutely considered, the predominating factor of an earlier period may continue to increase during the following: and, as a rule, it does continue to increase.

309.

I need cite only the instance of the slaves, who called out the hours, thus performing the functions of a clock: Martial, VIII. 67; Juvenal, X. 216; Petron. 26; of the turning of water wheels, in Egypt and Babylon, by human hands. Strabo, XVI. 738, XVII., 807. Among the ancients, it required one shepherd, and shepherd boys besides, to take care of twenty sheep. (Geopon. XVIII, 1.) In highly cultivated regions, the number ran up to fifty. (Demosth., adv. Euerg. et Mnes., 1155.) It seldom passed eighty (Varro, De re rust., II. 10, 10. 2, 20), or one hundred (Cato, R.R. c. 10); while, recently, five men are sufficient to take care of eighteen hundred sheep. See Roscher's discourse on the relation of Political Economy to classical antiquity, in the reports of the Royal Saxon Science Association, May, 1849. Also D. Hume, Discourses, No. 10.

310.

The productive power of each of the factors of production has been over-estimated by some schools. After Gratian (c. i, C. XIII. qu. i), had clearly recognized the necessary coöperation of the three elements, there was in the one-sidedness with which the Reformers emphasized God's blessing as the only source of wealth, a great over-estimation of the factor nature. The Mercantile System over-estimated the factor capital, in one of its most obvious component parts, money. In later times again: “La terre est la source ou la matière d'où l'on tire la ichesse; le travail de l'homme est la forme qui la produit. Tous les hommes d'un état subsistent et s'enrichissent aux dépens des propriétaires des terres.” (Cantillon, Sur la Nature du Commerce, 1755, I. 33, 55.) La terre est l'unique source des richesses. (Quesnay, Maximes générales de Gouvernement, 1758, ch. 3.) In another place, indeed, the same writer says: les revenus sont le produit des terres et des hommes (Grains, p. 276, Daire), and Mirabeau frequently laid stress on the necessary coöperation of labor and capital. (Landwirthschaftsphilosophie, translation by Wichmann, I, 5.) Turgot, Sur la Formation et Distribution des Richesses, § 7. For an excellent refutation of this “Physiocratic” one-sidedness, which, if all men are endowed by nature with equal rights, leads to socialism, see Canard, Principes, 6. According to Gioja, N. Prospetto, I. 35, the part played by labor, in the production of Parmesan cheese, is a thousand times as great as that played by the soil; and in the production of a Dutch tulip, a hundred thousand times as great. The English are wont, similarly, to over-estimate the relative power of labor. (Ponocratie, after Ancillon, Essais philosophiques, 1817, II. 327.) “Commerce and trade first spring from the labour of men.” (North, Discourses upon Trade, 112.) Thus, Locke (1690), Of Civil Government, II, 5, 40 ff., is of opinion, that, at least 9/10 of the value of the products of the soil, useful to man, are to be ascribed to labor, and, in the case of most, even 99/100. And so, Berkeley (1735), Querist, No. 38 seq. This view is advocated in its boldest form,—a thing unusual in the case of the independent disciples of a great master—by McCulloch, Principles, II, ch. i, that it is to labor, and to labor alone, that man owes everything that possesses any value in exchange. Similarly, J. Mill, Elements (1824), III, 2. The consequences which socialism might draw from these premises are self-evident. Karl Marx's whole system, for instance, rests, without any attempt at demonstration, on the assumption that the Ricardo school is right. Much more moderate views are met with earlier. Thus, Hobbes, De Cive, XIII, 14, and Leviath., 24 (1642 and 1651), calls labor et parsimonia necessary sources of wealth; proventus terræ et aquæ useful ones; and Petty, On Taxes (1679), 47, says: “Labour is the father and active principle of wealth, as lands are the mother. Land and labour together are the sources of all wealth; without a competency of lands there would be no subsistence, and but a very poor one without labour.” Harris, Upon Money and Coins, 1757, P.I. Adam Smith, also, in spite of the well known passage at the beginning of his work, very frequently lays stress on “the annual produce of land and labour.” (See the passages collected in Leser, Begriff des Reichthums bei A.S., 97.) According to Leibniz, regionis potentia consistit in terra, rebus, hominibus. (ed. Dutens, IV. 2, 531.) Ricardo's school is wont to bring capital under the head of labor, as saved-up labor. This is about as correct as to say, that all that a grown man does, his parents had done. (Umpfenbach, Nat. Œk., 64.) There is only one way in which labor, and even then the expression is not exactly correct, can be looked upon as the only factor in production; and that is to presuppose the forces of nature as matters of course (als sich von selbst verstehend), and to call the aggregate use made of them by the human mind, labor. Or we might say with old Epicharmos, that the gods sell all goods for labor. (Xenoph., Memor. II. 1.) Moreover, even in purely intellectual productions, in poetical productions for instance, nature, labor and experience, the culture inherited from former ages (a kind of intellectual capital) uniformly coöperate. But how almost completely valueless in literature are all entirely pure (empty!) productions of the fancy!

311.

Before the predominance of the Mercantile System, Montchrétien very cleverly called all trades: parcelles et fragments de cette sagesse divine que Dieu nous communique par le moyen de la raisen. By means of the three estates; labourers, artisans, merchands, tout état est nourri; par eux tout profit se fait. L'utilité règle les rangs des arts. (Traité, 12, 45, 66.) The teaching of P. Gregorius Tolosanos (ob. 1597) on the different classes of society and the different callings of men, is still more in keeping with the present doctrine of production; only, in the moralizing tone of the time, he speaks rather of their dignity than of their influence in creating wealth: De Rep. I, 195. See, also, the earlier views of Franc. Patricius (ob. 1494), De Rep. I, 4, 7, 8.

312.

Compare A. Serra, Breve Trattato delle Cause che possono far abbondare i Regni d'Oro d'Argento, 1613. Th. Mun, England's Treasure by foreign Trade, 1664. Ch. King, British Merchant or Commerce Preserved, 1721. But, particularly, A.C. Leib, Von Verbesserung Land und Leuten etc. (1708), who, from the point of view of the Mercantile System, draws a very clear distinction between the productive and unproductive classes. See, also, infra, § 116. First thoroughly refuted by W. Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland, 67, 82. Quantulumcunque concerning Money (1682). D. North, Discourses upon trade (1691). See Roscher's Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 77, 88, 138. And later, especially, Ad. Smith, W. of N. IV., ch. 1 ff. Adam Smith's doctrine of productive and unproductive labor is to be found already, in this period, in Petty, Several Essays, 127 ff. Political Anatomy, 185 ff; also, in the anonymous work, A Discourse of Trade, Coyn and Paper Credit, London (1697), 44, 159.

313.

Quesnay, Dialogue sur les Travaux des Artisans, 210 ff.; 289 éd. Daire; Turgot, Sur la Formation etc., § 8; Dupont, Correspondence avec J.B. Say, 400, éd. Daire. B. Franklin, Letter to Dr. Evans (1768), and Positions Concerning National Wealth (1769), Works ed. Sparks, VII and II. Similarly even Aristotle, Oec., I, 2, says, that commerce, wage-labor and war win from men, with or without their will; but that only agriculture obtains booty from nature. And so Cicero says of merchants: nihil proficiunt, nisi admodum mentiantur. De Off., I, 42. The same view seems to have prevailed during the middle ages. See Thom. Aquin., De Rebus publicis, II, 3, 5 seq. Luther entertained a like notion (Vom Kaufhandel und Wucher, 1524). He prefers agriculture to the trades. See the Irmischer edition of his works, XXII, 284; XXXVI, 172; LXI, 352. Calvin considered commerce both useful and honorable; so that ex ipsius mercatoris diligentia atque industria, its profit may be greater than that of agriculture. (Opp. ed. Amstelod, 1664, IX, 223.) Asgill, Several Assertions proved in order to create another Species of Money than Gold (1691): “what we call commodities is nothing but land severed from the soil; man deals in nothing but earth.” Concerning Cantillon, compare § 47, note 4. How violent an innovation the Physiocratic theory was in its time may be inferred from what Zincke writes in the Leipzig Sammlungen, X, 551 ff. (1753), p. 20, XIII, 861.

314.

Quesnay, l. c., 189, does not ignore that many workmen earn more than the cost of their necessary subsistence; but he claimed that this was a result of a natural or legal monopoly of the same. The dearer labor was, the more productive it seemed. Per contra, see Dohm on the Physiocratic system, in the Deutsch. Museum, 1778, II, 313 ff.

315.

Gournay (compare Turgot, Eloge de G., in Guillaumin's edition, I, 266, 271 ff.), as well as Raynal, Histoire des Indes, vol. X, Livre 19, spite of the similarity of their and Quesnay's views, acknowledged on this account, the productiveness of industry. For some remarkable examples illustrative of how it may increase the value in exchange of raw material, see the anonymous work, Paying Old Debts without New Taxes, London, 1723. See also Algarotti (ob. 1794), 318, in Custodi, Economisti classici italiani, Parte moderna, I. Thus a cwt. of coarse cast iron is converted, in a Berlin manufactory, into 88,440 shirt buttons worth 6-⅔ silver groschens each. Hence the value is raised from 1-2 thalers to 19,653 thalers. The increase of the value in use by industrial labor is self-evident.

316.

Quesnay, Dialogue sur le Commerce.

317.

Recognized very early by Ad. Contzen, Politicorum, Lib. VIII, C. 10 (1629).

318.

This did not escape the notice of Frederick II. Von Raumer, Hohenstaufen, III, 535.

319.

Condillac acknowledges the productive power both of industry and of commerce; and that the service rendered by the state is at least economically indispensable. (Le Commerce et le Gouvernment, 1776, I, 6, 7, 10.) Beccaria, Economia pubblica (1769 ff.), IV, 4, 24. Boisguillebert (ob. 1714), Sur la Nature des Richesses, illustrated the utility of commerce by the picture of a number of men bound to pillars, one hundred steps apart, one with a superabundance of food but naked, a second with a superabundance of fuel, a third with a superabundance of clothing etc.; all of whom perish, because unable to exchange their respective surpluses with one another. According to Lotz, Revision, I, 217, “buying dear,” apart from real fraud, means only a decrease of possible gain.

320.

Verri, Meditazioni, XXIV, instead of calling the merchant productive, calls him a mediator between producers and consumers. It would be just as reasonable to call the shoemaker a mediator between the production and consumption of leather; or the cloth merchant, who cuts the material from the piece, an assistant preparatory to the tailor. The labor of commerce is especially like that of the fisherman or the turf digger, because they produce only in so far as they transfer goods from inaccessible to accessible places. See, however, Rau, Lehrbuch, I, § 103. See the demonstration of the productive power of commerce in general, as well as of what is, by way of preference, called industry, in Ad. Smith, W. of N., IV, ch. 9. A much more fundamental refutation of the Physiocratic Principle is to be found in Jacob, N. Œk., 204 ff.

321.

In 1843, about 55,000 tons of ice were shipped from Boston. Less than 25 cents per ton was paid for the ice in the first instance. When packed on board ship, it was worth $2.55 per ton. The ultimate sale brought $3,575,000. Ausland, 1844, No. 278. The ancients were acquainted with a similar production of ice, the value in exchange of which might be almost entirely reduced to the labor of commerce. See Xenoph., Memor., II, I, 30; Athen. III 97: Proverbs of Solomon, 25, 13.

322.

W. of N., ch. 3. See, however, Garnier's French translation of Ad. Smith, Préf. p. IX and V, note 20. Similarly, Malthus, Principles, ch. 1, Lect. 21. Definitions, ch. 7, 10.

323.

Bacon had already said of the nobility, clergy and literateurs: sorti reipublicæ nihil addunt (Serm., 15, 29); in opposition to which, Hobbes justly remarks, that even human labor may, like other things, be exchanged against goods of all sorts. (Leviathan, 24.) In the work, Discourse of Trade, Coyn and Credit, p. 44 ff., and p. 156, the absolute necessity of “head-work” as well as bodily labor, is conceded; but it is insisted that physicians, clergymen and jurists can never enrich a country, and that a relatively large number of them would even conduce to national poverty. (See Roscher, Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 138.) David Hume considers merchants as productive, but says that a doctor or lawyer can grow rich only at the expense of some one else. (Discourses, No. 4, On Interest.) Ferguson very cleverly compares such a valuation of national wealth to that of a miser. Hist. of Civil Society, VI, I.

324.

Similarly Lauderdale, Inquiry, 355; Lotz, Handbuch der Staätswirthschaft, I, § 39, and Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 195, concede only indirect productiveness to commerce. It may be shown, in a great many instances, that such productiveness exists side by side with direct productiveness, on account of the thousand ways in which all economic threads are interwoven with one another. Thus Paley remarks in his work on the Principles of Morals and Politics, that a tobacco manufacturer even may contribute indirectly to the cultivation of grain; an actor, to industry etc.

325.

Thus Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes, II, ch. 1, and, earlier, Mengotti Colbertismo, 317. (Cust.) See, on the other hand, Hermann, Staatsw. Untersuchungen, 34 ff. Even J.B. Say does no manner of justice, in this respect, to personal services. He speaks of produits qui ne s'attachent à rien qui s'évanouissent à mésure qu'ils naissent, qu'il est impossible d'accumuler, qui n'ajoutent rein à la richesse nationale. Compare Catéchisme (3d ed.) 52 ff., 174 ff. On the other hand Dunoyer, Libertê du Travail, L.V., remarks that here labor and its result are made to change places; the former like all labor is very perishable, the latter as lasting as in the case of other kinds of labor. In the one case the utility is fixed in things, in the other in persons. Ad. Müller, Elemente der Staatskunst passim, calls special attention to how the kinds of labor, called unproductive by Adam Smith, preserve the state, and in that way, all individual exchangeable goods. Similarly, Storch, Handbuch, I, 347; Steinlein, Handbuch, I, 460. Lauderdale (443), however, is correct when he says, that the continued duration of the product of labor depends, usually, more on the caprice of consumers than on the nature of the labor.

326.

Garnier calls attention to the fact, that there is a great quantity of material products, such as laces, perfumes etc., that can scarcely be ever used in further production, and, generally speaking, one's resources for the most part are not kept in lasting goods, but are preserved by the change of technic forms in production. Hermann, I, Aufl., 115.

327.

When Schön, Nat. Œkonomie, 33, ridicules the idea of the productiveness of personal services, by citing the instance of prostitution carried on as a trade, he forgets that many material goods also may conduce to the moral damage of the purchaser of them. It is said that there are in France 3,500 retailers and colporteurs of immoral writings and pictures, who sell yearly nine million numbers or pieces, at a cost of six million francs! (Moniteur, 9 Avril, 1853.)

328.

Compare Schäffle, Theorie der ausschliessenden Absatzverhältnise, 1867, 135. seq.

329.

Many of the socialists take a retrograde step in this respect, in as much as they consider only manual labor productive. Fourier's school particularly, declaim passionately against the unproductiveness of commerce and of most personal services. Compare V. Considérant, Destinée sociale, 1851, I, 44.

330.

Besides the above, see Gioja, N. Prospetto, I, 246 ff.; Scialoja, 42; J. B. Say, Traité, I, ch. 2; Hufeland, N. Grundlegung, I, 42, 54; Gr. Soden, Nat. Œkonomie, I, 142 ff. Hermann, St. Untersuchungen, 20 ff., distinguishes three politico-economical points of view; that of the producer, that of the consumer, and that of the whole nation's economy. The producer calls his labor productive, in case he receives back his outlay of capital with the rate of profit usual in the trade of the country. To this point of view, therefore, every service which is paid for, according to wish, seems productive. On the other hand, the consumer ascribes productiveness to all those kinds of labor the achievements of which he may use, and which he can obtain at a convenient price. Whenever, therefore, he pays for a service voluntarily, he acknowledges its productiveness. Lastly, from a national-economical point of view, all labor is considered productive which increases the quantity of goods exposed for sale in the market; and this, personal services do. The technic productiveness, which depends on the execution of the technic ideas floating before the mind of the workman, must be distinguished from this economic productiveness. It is possible that, technically labor may be very productive, and yet cause economic loss; for instance, the fine arts and the so-called master pieces of the trades! See Seneca, De Benef., II, 33. H. (33) furnishes a very good refutation of the doctrine that a great deal depends on whether the labor has been paid from capital or from income. Eiselen, Volkswirthschaft (1843), 27 ff., remarks, that the laborer, for instance, who grows corn, must besides look after his health and the preservation of his house; this is a part of his necessary aggregate labor. Why, then, should it be called unproductive when such secondary labor is performed by particular persons? Otherwise the farmer would have no time whatever for his principal business! Edinburgh Review, 1804, IV, 343 ff.; Wakefield, An Essay upon Political Economy, 1804, who is concerned mainly with the theory of the productiveness of labor. L. Lauderdale says, that when the nation's wealth is estimated according to its value in use, all useful labor is productive; and that when estimated according to its value in exchange, all labor that is paid is productive. (Inquiry, ch. 3.) Stein (Lehrbuch, 68; Tüb. Zeitschr., 1868, 230) conditions the notion of productiveness by the presence of a superfluity of values. But, it may be asked, does a family, which does no more than support itself, labor unproductively? (Compare, however, § 30.) J. S. Mill took a surprisingly retrograde step in the doctrine on this point, in his Principles, I, ch. 3. Compare his Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy, No. 3. A still more surprising exaggeration in de Augustinis Instituzzioni di Economia sociale (Napoli 1837), who goes so far as to call a person guilty of arson a productive person because he has produced for himself “the pleasure of destruction”! More recently, von Mangoldt distinguishes between economic labor and the labor of culture: the latter is incorporated into the man himself, the former one employed on the external world, in order to transform it in a way corresponding to human wants. Viewed from the stand-point of Political Economy, the latter only is productive. (Volkswirthschaftslehre, 1865, 26 ff.)

331.

We might, indeed, compare original production, that which preceded all other, to eating; the trades, to digestion; commerce, to the movements of the several members of the body; personal services to inspiration, and yet all are equally necessary to the life of the body! Thus, Gamilh compares agriculture to the root of a tree of which the service rendered by the state is the top. The growth of the latter contributes, as well as that of the former, to the nutrition of the whole, and is far removed from exhausting the tree. Théorie de l' E.P., II, 46 ff. “Natural production” would, indeed, accomplish very little without the legal protection guaranteed by the state, or without the tools furnished by industry etc. But it is, besides, in most instances, a distortion of the truth to speak of productive and unproductive men or classes of men. These expressions are proper only when applied to individual kinds of labor. See Murhard, Ideen über Nat. Œk., 88 ff. Persons seriously ill are temporarily unproductive, and children who die early, are unproductive for their whole life.

332.

Not, however, in the case in which the loser estimates the pleasure of the play higher than the loss.

333.

J. B. Say, Traité, I. ch. 1.

334.

v. Cancrin, Œkonomie der menschlichen Gesellschaften, 1845, 10, speaks, in this case, of privative production. Among the Socialists, Bazard's expression l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme, has found loud echo; instead of which only l'exploitation du globe par l'homme should be allowed to obtain. (Exposition de la Doctrine de St. Simon, 24.) But von Schröder had already warned the world of “imagined food” which led only to idleness. (F. Schatz- und Rentkammer, 191, 363.)

335.

Therefore, there should not be too many nor too highly salaried offices. See Storch, Nationaleinkommen, 33 ff.

336.

See v. Mangoldt, Volkswirthschaftslehre, 29 ff.

337.

Remained, and not become, poor, as is generally supposed; for the enormous wealth of Spain, under Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as during the early period of Charles V. is only a fable convenue. Charles V. said: France has a superabundance of everything, and Spain is in want of everything. See also the embassy report of Navagero (1526), Viaggio fatto in Spagna e in Francia (Venet., 1563), and Ranke, Fürsten und Volker, I, 393 ff.

338.

The prize was won by Arreta de Monteseguro. The author of the history of Portuguese Asia, translated by Stevens, is of opinion (III, ch. 6), that commerce is not a proper subject for serious history to treat.

339.

There is a very fine description of this spirit in Clenard, Epist. I. ad Latomum (1535 ff.) Compare Juvellanos, in Laborde, Itinéraire déscriptif, IV, 176. Townsend, Journey through Spain, II, 207, 117. Buckle, History of Civilization, II, ch. I. The census of 1788 gave the number of priests and monks, soldiers, mariners, nobles, lawyers, tax-gatherers, authors, students and domestics, at 1,221,000, in a total of 3,800,000 men; from which number there was a multitude of beggars, vagrants etc. to be deducted. Laborde, Itinéraire, II, 32 ff. The seventeen universities and the numberless small Latin schools, with their gratuitous instruction, and their many scholarships, misled a disproportionately large number to engage in study. At the beginning of this century, there were at least 200,000 priests, nuns (Geistliche), etc., in a population of from three to three and a half millions only. (Ebeling, Erdbeschreibung von Portugal, 66.) Senior shows that the poverty of the Osman is caused by too many state employees, tax-farmers and retail merchants. (Journal kept in Turkey and Greece, 1857-58.) Thus, also, J. Tucker, Four Tracts, 1774, 18, contrasts men engaged in industry with rich idlers, whose increase, possibly by immigration, would make the people a nation of “gentlemen and ladies, footmen, grooms, laundresses etc.” Schmitthener, N. Œk., 656, calls a condition such as that of Spain, “national-economical phthisis.”

340.

Tucker, Progress of the U.S., 137. The following data also will serve for a comparison: In Belgium, in 1856, it was estimated that, leaving persons sans profession out of consideration, 45.6 per cent. were agriculturists, 37.2 industrials, 6.7 in commerce, 2.8 in the liberal professions, 1.5 force publique, 2.1 propriétaires, rentiers, pensionnés, 3.7 domesticité. In Prussia, in 1871, of the entire male population, 28.6 per cent. were engaged in agriculture, forest-culture, hunting and fishing: 32.3 per cent. in mining, industry, building, and in founderies: 8.56 in trade and commerce; 20.3 in personal services and handiwork not belonging to any of the groups above mentioned; 2.3 in the army and navy; 3.7 in other callings; 2.7 were renters, pensioners, and persons who lived by selling or renting houses, reserving lodgings for themselves therein, and persons who gave no account of their calling. (Preuss. statisc. Zeitschr., 1875, 32. ff.) It is, however, surprising that Engel's Amtl. Jahrbuch, III, 1867, gives only 48 per cent. as belonging to the first category, and 25 to the second. In the kingdom of Saxony in 1861, 25.1 per cent. of the population were agriculturists and foresters; 56.1 were engaged in industry; 7.7 in trade and commerce; 6.8 in art, science, the service of the state and of private persons; while 4.1 per cent were without any particular calling, or returned none. Bavaria, in 1852, had 67.9 per cent. of its population engaged in agriculture; 22.7 in the trades and in manufactures; 5.5 per cent., persons living on the interest of their money, and by performing the higher class of personal services; 1.9 in the army; and 2 per cent. of listed poor. In Hermann, Beiträge zur Statistik des Königreichs Bayern. In France, according to the official reports, there were: Agriculteurs 61.46 per cent. in 1851, 51.49 per cent. in 1866; Industriels et commerçants 25.95 per cent. in 1851, 32.78 per cent. in 1866; Professions libérales 9.73 per cent. in 1851, 9.48 per cent. in 1866. To which it must be added, that, in 1851, there were 2.86 sans profession ou dont les professions n'ont pu être constatées; and that, in 1866, on the other hand, there were 2.87 per cent. in professions se rattachant à l'agriculture, industrie et commerce. (Legoyt.) In England and Wales, leaving the domestic class out of consideration (women without an independent means of employment, school children, servant girls etc.), and also the “indefinite class,” there were, in 1861, 25.3 per cent. of the population engaged in agricultural pursuits; 60.7 in industrial; 7.8 in commercial; and 6.06 in professional pursuits. In Italy, omitting housewives, children and infirm persons, there were, in 1862, 57.4 per cent. of the population engaged in agriculture; 22.9 in industrial pursuits; 4 in commerce; and 3.9 per cent. in the army and in the liberal professions. (Annali univ. di Statistica, Febbr., 1866.) On Holland, in the middle of the 17th century, see J. de Wit, Mémoires, 34 seq.

341.

Csaplovics, Gemälde von Ungarn II, 1. Torrens, The Budget: On commercial and colonial Policy, 106 ff.

342.

Precisely as there are more people ruined by spirituous liquors than by bread. Time thieving is also more frequent among servants. There is scarcely anything in agriculture analogous to the lazzaroni who wait all day to help a gondola to land, to unload a coach, etc. There is more in the chase, in the fisheries, or in the cattle raising.

343.

Compare Bastiat, Harmonies économiques, ch. 17. Hence Sismondi accounts it one of the chief merits of the constitutional state, that in it, the population gardienne does not regulate its own remuneration. (N.P., I, 144.) Saint Simon, indeed, says that the French members of the Chambre, in his time, drew a revenue from the state, three times as large as from their own resources, and were, therefore, deeply interested in increasing the budget. (Vues sur la Propriété et la Législation, 1818.) I would call attention also to the national over-estimation and over-crowding of learned callings from which Germany suffered, even as far back as the time of Louis XIV. (v. Schröder, Fürstl. Schatz-und Rentkammer, 302 ff.); to the disproportionate number of keepers of public houses, which is related to the system of popular assemblies, and is a regular attendant upon Democracy (Bronner, Der C. Aargau, I, 451.) Taxation-legislation may here become a good means of popular education.

344.

This was recognized very early by Gregor. Tolsan, l.c. Ad. Müller, Elemente, II, 255. Storch, Handbuch, II, 229 ff. (Schleiermacher, Christ. Sitte, 668.) A. Smith, W. of N., II, ch. 5, ascribed greater productiveness to agricultural than to industrial labor; in the former case, not only human labor was put in operation, but the forces of nature were compelled to coöperate with them. Similarly, Malthus, Additions (1817) to the Essay on the Principle of Population, B. III, ch. 8-12. Principles of P. E., 217 ff. Both thus explain the rent of land, and so far as products, which have only value in exchange are concerned, they are right. Hence it is all the more surprising that Carey, the zealous advocate of a protective tariff and opponent of rent, comes back in this to Adam Smith. Principles of Social Science, 1858, II, 35, and passim. Compare also J. B. Say, Traité, II, ch. 8; Sismondi, N. P., II, ch. 5. For the best refutation of this view, see Ricardo, Principles, ch. 2, 3. Does not all labor put the force of nature in operation? Ad opera nihil aliud potest homo, quam ut corpora naturalia admoveat, reliqua natura intus transigit. (Bacon.) Similarly, Verri, Meditazioni, III, 1. An expression escapes even Ricardo himself (ch. 7), to the effect, that capitalists are the producing class.

345.

Relying on very superficial statistics of England and France, Ganilh advocates a theory of the productive forces of the several branches of economy the very reverse of Adam Smith's. He places foreign trade first; then follow wholesale trade, industry and agriculture. (Théorie, I, 240 seq.)

346.

Ausland, 1846, No. 54. Expressions still used in Europe, such as Spindelmagen (spindle-relation), Kunkellehen (apron-string-hold) etc., for instance, suggest this most ancient and purely family division of labor. The lower classes of the population, even in the most civilized countries, are wont to preserve some of the peculiar customs of very primitive times. Hence it is that among proletarians, the division of labor between males and females is still very small. The employments usual at different stages of life among men, and the costumes worn by them are much more uniform than among the higher classes. See Riehl, Die Familie, 1855, passim.

347.

As Dankwardt shows, the jus civile of the earliest Roman time is based on the condition of isolated labor, the later jus gentium, on the division of labor. N. Œk. und Jurisprudenz, 1857, Heft. I.