It can however never exactly happen, that labor will be exchanged, in this simple way, for labor.The formation of every instrument, besides labor, requires also the assistance of some other instrument.Even the basket-maker and the hat-maker, allowing them to get the twigs and straw they require, for the trouble of collecting them, would need, the one at least a knife, and the other a needle and thread.Auxiliaries so inconsiderable as these need scarce be noticed in the reckoning; but there are eases where these assisting instruments may be said to do a great part, others, in which they may be said to do nearly the whole of the work.In a steam-boat the engine may be considered as the great laboring power, though the services of the men who supply fuel, and regulate the motion of it and of the boat, enter also largely into the account.In a set of well-contrived, and well-finished pipes, for conducting water through a city to the different houses in it, the amount of human labor entering into the process is very trifling.
A weaver we shall suppose receives thread to weave into a piece of linen, and finishes the job in thirty days.Were he now in return, to receive from his employer simply thirty days' labor, he would get too little.For, his loom being an instrument partially exhausted in fabricating the linen, this exhaustion ought to form an item in the account.Suppose that the effective desire of accumulation of the individual, is of strength sufficient to carry him to the order G, doubling in seven years, that the loom cost one hundred days' labor, and that it will be exhausted in seven years;it would then require to return two hundred days' labor, or an equivalent, at the end of that period.The return however is not delayed so long, bat begins to come in daily, immediately after its construction.Calculating then what yearly return is equal to two hundred days at the end of seven years, in the estimation of a man who reckons one day now equal to two then, it will turn out to be nearly twenty days.We may allow that the loom is in employment three hundred days a year, it would therefore, on these principles, have to return two days labor, for every thirty days during which it was in operation, and the weaver would consequently have to receive an equivalent to thirty-two days' labor; at least had he not a moral certainty of receiving this, he would not have formed the instrument, and were such return to cease he would not reconstruct it.
The transport of goods, by sea is an event brought about as much by the agency of instruments, as by direct human labor.A vessel costs, we shall say, five thousand days' labor, and is exhausted in seven years, she is navigated by three men.If she belongs to a person whose effective desire of accumulation carries him only to the class G, and supposing they who navigate her to be paid for three hundred days' labor, she must, on these principles, return about nineteen hundred days' labor annually.Say she is freighted to carry a cargo of timber, and that the voyage occupies three months.This transport is a.part of the process of the formation of certain instruments, houses, furniture, etc.as necessary as any other part of it, the owner will therefore receive directly, or indirectly, from those engaged in their formation, an equivalent to not less than four hundred and seventy-five days' labor.
It is to be observed, too, that, even in cases where labor alone seems to be paid for, time generally also forms one of the items to be taken into account.Thus, an individual contracts, within three months, to fell the trees on a certain piece of forest land in a North American settlement.
If then he be paid at the commencement of the three months, he will expect to receive less than if payment be deferred until the expiration of that time, and the difference between the two amounts will be regulated, as in other cases, by the particular orders to which instruments, in that particular situation, are generally wrought up.The same things hold good in all instances where labor is paid for by the work executed, or, as it is termed, by the piece.
The division of employments and consequent prevalence of the system of exchange, occasions a particular classification of instruments.
Before the division of employments takes place, the instruments which every man forms, or causes to be formed, are for his immediate use, and after it has taken place, the portion individuals reserve for this purpose makes still a considerable part of the whole instruments belonging to any community.Even the poorest beggar has some clothes to cover him; the opulent have houses, furniture, clothing, gardens, pleasure-grounds, tie.This part of the whole instruments possessed by individuals or communities is termed a stock reserved for immediate consumption.
The remainder of the general stock of instruments of individuals and of societies, with the exception of land, considered not as actually cultivated, but as having a capacity for being cultivated, is termed capital.The instruments to which this term applies supply the future wants of the individuals owning them, indirectly, either from being themselves commodities that may be exchanged for articles directly suited to their needs, or by their capacity of producing commodities which may be so exchanged.
Capital itself is again subdivided into fixed, and circulating capital.
Fixed capital consists of instruments which have a capacity for producing commodities to be exchanged, but are not themselves formed for the purpose of being exchanged.Circulating capital consists of commodities fitted for being exchanged, or of instruments in process of formation into such commodities.
