while he produces nothing are so much subtracted, for the time, from the material products which society would otherwise have possessed. But, though society grows no richer by unproductive labor, the individual may. An unproductive laborer may receive for his labor, from those who derive pleasure or benefit from it, a remuneration which may be to him a considerable source of wealth; but his gain is balanced by their loss; they may have received a full equivalent for their expenditure, but they are so much poorer by it. When a tailor makes a coat and sells it there is a transfer of the price from the customer to the tailor, and a coat besides which did not previously exist; but what is gained by an actor is a mere transfer from the spectator's funds to his, leaving no article of wealth for the spectator's indemnification. Thus the community collectively gains nothing by the actor's labor; and it loses, of his receipts, all that portion which he consumes, retaining only that which he lays by. A community, however, may add to its wealth by unproductive labor, at the expense of other communities, as an individual may at the expense of other individuals. The gains of Italian opera singers, German governesses, French ballet dancers, etc., are a source of wealth, as far as they go, to their respective countries, if they return thither. The petty states of Greece, especially the ruder and more backward of those states, were nurseries of soldiers, who hired themselves to the princes and satraps of the East to carry on useless and destructive wars, and returned with their savings to pass their declining years in their own country: these were unproductive laborers, and the pay they received, together with the plunder they took, was an outlay without return to the countries which furnished it; but, though no gain to the world, it was a gain to Greece. At a later period the same country and its colonies supplied the Roman empire with another class of adventurers, who, under the name of philosophers or of rhetoricians, taught to the youth of the higher classes what were esteemed the most valuable accomplishments: these were mainly unproductive laborers, but their ample recompense was a source of wealth to their own country. In none of these cases was there any accession of wealth to the world. The services of the laborers, if useful, were obtained at a sacrifice to the world of a portion of material wealth; if useless, all that these laborers consumed was, to the world, waste.

To be wasted, however, is a liability not confined to unproductive labor. Productive labor may equally be wasted if more of it is expended than really conduces to production. If defect of skill in laborers, or of judgment in those who direct them, causes a misapplication of productive industry; if a farmer persists in ploughing with three horses and two men, when experience has shown that two horses and one man are sufficient, the surplus labor, though employed for purposes of production, is wasted. If a new process is adopted which proves no better, | or not so good as those before in use, the labor expended in perfecting the invention and in carrying it into practice, though employed for a productive purpose, is wasted. Productive labor may render a nation poorer, if the wealth it produces-that is, the increase it makes in the stock of useful or agreeable thingsbe of a kind not immediately wanted: as when a commodity is unsalable, because produced in a quantity beyond the present demand; or when speculators build docks and warehouses before there is any trade. The bankrupt states of North America, with their premature railways and canals, have made this kind of mistake; and it was for some time doubtful whether England, in the disproportionate development of railway enterprise, had not, in some degree, followed the example. Labor sunk in expectation of a distant return, when the great exigencies or limited resources of the community require that the return be rapid, may leave the country not only poorer in the meanwhile, by all which those laborers consume, but less rich even ultimately than if immediate returns had been sought in the first instance, and enterprises for distant profit postponed.

§ 5. The distinction of Productive and Unproductive is applicable to consumption as well as to labor. All the members of the community are not laborers, but all are consumers, and consume either unproductively or productively. Whoever contributes nothing directly or indirectly to production, is an unproductive consumer. The only productive consumers are productive laborers, the labor of direction being of course included, as well as that of execution. But the consumption even of productive laborers is not all of it productive consumption. There is unproductive consumption by productive consumers. What they consume in keeping up or improving their health, strength, and capacities of work, or in rearing other productive laborers to succeed them, is productive consumption. But consumption on

pleasures or luxuries, whether by the idle or by the industrious, since production is neither its object nor is in any way advanced by it, must be reckoned unproductive: with a reservation, perhaps, of a certain quantum of enjoyment which may be classed among necessaries, since anything short of it would not be consistent with the greatest efficiency of labor. That alone is productive consumption which goes to maintain and increase the productive powers of the community; either those residing in its soil, in its materials, in the number and efficiency of its instruments of production, or in its people.

There are numerous products which may be said not to admit of being consumed otherwise than unproductively. The annual consumption of gold lace, pineapples, or champagne must be reckoned unproductive, since these things give no assistance to production, nor any support to life or strength, but what would equally be given by things much less costly. Hence it might be supposed that the labor employed in producing them ought not to be regarded as productive in the sense in which the term is understood by political economists. I grant that no labor tends to the permanent enrichment of society which is employed in producing things for the use of unproductive consumers. The tailor who makes a coat for a man who produces nothing is a productive laborer; but in a few weeks or months the coat is worn out, while the wearer has not produced anything to replace it, and the community is then no richer by the labor of the tailor than if the same sum had been paid for a stall at the opera. Nevertheless, society has been richer by the labor while the coat lasted—that is, until society, through one of its unproductive members, chose to consume the produce of the labor unproductively. The case of the gold lace or the pineapple is no further different than that they are still further removed than the coat from the character of necessaries. These things also are wealth until they have been consumed.

§ 6. We see, however, by this that there is a distinction, more important to the wealth of a community than even that between productive and unproductive labor-the distinction, namely, between labor for the supply of productive, and for the supply of unproductive consumption; between labor employed in keeping up or in adding to the productive resources of the country, and that which is employed otherwise. Of the produce of the country, a part only is destined to be consumed productively; the

remainder supplies the unproductive consumption of producers and the entire consumption of the unproductive classes. Suppose that the proportion of the annual produce applied to the first purpose amounts to half; then one-half the productive laborers of the country are all that are employed in the operations on which the permanent wealth of the country depends. The other half are occupied from year to year, and from generation to generation, in producing things which are consumed and disappear without return; and whatever this half consume is as completely lost, as to any permanent effect on the national resources, as if it were consumed unproductively. Suppose that this second half of the laboring population ceased to work, and that the government or their parishes maintained them in idleness for a whole year: the first half would suffice to produce, as they had done before, their own necessaries and the necessaries of the second half, and to keep the stock of materials and implements undiminished; the unproductive classes, indeed, would be either starved or obliged to produce their own subsistence, and the whole community would be reduced during a year to bare necessaries; but the sources of production would be unimpaired, and the next year there would not necessarily be a smaller produce than if no such interval of inactivity had occurred; while, if the case had been reversed, if the first half of the laborers had suspended their accustomed occupations, and the second half had continued theirs, the country at the end of the twelvemonth would have been entirely impoverished.

It would be a great error to regret the large proportion of the annual produce which, in an opulent country, goes to supply unproductive consumption. It would be to lament that the community has so much to spare from its necessities for its pleasures and for all higher uses. This portion of the produce is the fund from which all the wants of the community, other than that of mere living, are provided for-the measure of its means of enjoyment and of its power of accomplishing all purposes not productive. That so great a surplus should be available for such purposes, and that it should be applied to them, can only be a subject of congratulation. The things to be regretted, and which are not incapable of being remedied, are the prodigious inequality with which this surplus is distributed, the little worth of the objects to which the greater part of it is devoted, and the large share which falls to the lot of persons who render no equivalent service in return.

Chapter IV. Of Capital

§ 1. It has been seen in the preceding chapters that, besides the primary and universal requisites of production, labor and natural agents, there is another requisite without which no productive operations beyond the rude and scanty beginnings of primitive industry are possible, namely, a stock, previously accumulated, of the products of former labor. This accumulated stock of the produce of labor is termed Capital. The function of Capital in production it is of the utmost importance thoroughly to understand, since a number of the erroneous notions with which our subject is infested originate in an imperfect and confused apprehension of this point.

Capital, by persons wholly unused to reflect on the subject, is supposed to be synonymous with money. To expose this misapprehension would be to repeat what has been said in the introductory chapter. Money is no more synonymous with capital than it is with wealth. Money cannot itself perform any part of the office of capital, since it can afford no assistance to production. To do this it must be exchanged for other things; and anything which is susceptible of being exchanged for other things is capable of contributing to production in the same degree. What capital does for production, is to afford the shelter, protection, tools, and materials which the work requires, and to feed and otherwise maintain the laborers during the process. These are the services which present labor requires from past, and from the produce of past, labor. Whatever things are destined for this use-destined to supply productive labor with these various prerequisites-are Capital.

To familiarize ourselves with the conception, let us consider what is done with the capital invested in any of the branches of business which compose the productive industry of a country. A manufacturer, for example, has one part of his capital in the form of buildings fitted and destined for carrying on his branch of manufacture. Another part he has in the form of machinery. A third consists, if he be a spinner, of raw cotton, flax, or wool; if a weaver, of flaxen, woollen, silk, or cotton thread; and the like, according to the nature of the manufacture. Food and clothing for his operatives it is not the custom of the present age that he should directly provide; and few capitalists, except the producers of food or clothing, have any