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with their lives. It is our capital. It has been produced by labor alone, physical and mental. It can be kept up only by the same power which has created it, carried to the highest point of productiveness by the arrangements of society.

CHAPTER VI.

COMMON INTERESTS OF CAPITAL AND LABOR.-LABOR DIRECTED BY ACCUMULATION. -CAPITAL ENHANCED BY LABOR.-BALANCE OF RIGHTS AND DUTIES.-RELATION OF DEMAND AND SUPPLY.-MONEY EXCHANGES.

THERE is an old proverb, that "When two men ride on one horse, one man must ride behind." Capital and Labor are, as we think, destined to perform a journey together to the end of time. We have shown how they proceed on this journey. We have shown that, although Labor is the parent of all wealth, its struggles for the conversion of the rude supplies of nature into objects of utility are most feeble in their effects till they are assisted by accumulation. Before the joint interests of Labor and Capital were at all understood, they kept separate; when they only began to be understood, as we shall show, they were constantly pulling different ways, instead of giving "a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull altogether;" and even now, when these interests in many respects are still imperfectly understood, they occasionally quarrel about the conditions upon which they will continue to travel in company. In the very outset of the journey, Labor, doubtless, took the lead. In the dim morning of society Labor was up and stirring before Capital was awake. Labor did not then ride; he traveled slowly on foot through very dirty ways. Capital, at length, as slowly followed after, through the same mire, but at an humble distance from his parent. But when Capital grew into strength, he saw that there were quicker and more

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agreeable modes of traveling for both than Labor had found out. He procured that fleet and untiring horse Exchange; and when he proposed to Labor that they should mount together, he claimed the right, and kept it, for their mutual benefit, of taking the direction of the horse. For this reason, as it appears to us, we are called upon to assign to one of the companions, according to the practice of the old Knights Templars, the privilege of sitting before the other -holding the reins, indeed, but in all respects having a community of interests and an equality of duties, as well as rights, with his fellow-traveler.

Let us endeavor to advance another step, in the illustration of these positions, by going back to the prodigal who had spent all his substance. Let us survey him at the moment when he had made the wise, and in many respects heroic, resolution to pass from the condition of a consumer into that of a producer. The story says, "The first thing that drew his attention was a heap of coals shot out of a cart on the pavement before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel them into the place where they were to be laid, and was employed." Here, then, we see that the labor of this man was wholly and imperatively directed by accumulation. It was directed as absolutely by the accumulation of others as the labor of Dampier's Mosquito Indian was directed by his own accumulation. The Indian could not labor profitably-he could not obtain fish and goats for his food, instead of seal's flesh-till he had called into action the power which he possessed in his knife and his gun-barrel. The prodigal had no accumulation whatever of his own. He had not even the accumulation of peculiar skill in any mode of labor; for a continual process of waste enlarges neither the mental nor physical faculties, and generally leaves the wretched being who has to pass into the new condition of a producer as helpless as the weakest child.

He had nothing but the lowest power, of laboring without peculiar knowledge or skill. He had, however, an intensity and consistency of purpose which raised this humble power into real strength. He was determined never to go backward, always to go on. He knew, too, his duties as well as his rights; and he saw that he must wholly accommodate his power to the greater power which was in action around him. When he passed into the condition of a producer, he saw that his powers and rights were wholly limited and directed by the principles necessary to advance production; and that his own share of what he assisted in producing must be measured by the laws which enabled him to produce at all. He found himself in a position where his labor was absolutely governed by the system of exchanges. No other system could operate around him, because he was in a civilized country. Had he been thrown upon a desert land without food and shelter, his labor must have been instantly and directly applied to procuring food and shelter. He was equally without food and shelter in a civilized country. But the system of exchanges being in action, he did not apply his labor directly to the production of food and lodg ing for himself. He added by his labor a new value to a heap of coals; he enabled another man more readily to acquire the means of warmth; and by this service, which he exchanged for "a few pence" and "a small gratuity of meat and drink," he indirectly obtained food and lodging. He conferred an additional value upon a heap of coals, and that additional value was represented by the "few pence” and "a small gratuity of meat and drink." Had the system of exchange been less advanced, that is, had society been less civilized, he would probably have exchanged his labor for some object of utility by another and a ruder mode. He would have received a portion of the coals as the price of the labor by which he gave an additional value to the whole

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heap. But mark the inconvenience of such a mode of exchange. His first want was food; his next, shelter. Had he earned the coals, he must have carried them about till he had found some other person ready to exchange food and lodging for coals. Such an occurrence might have happened, but it would have been a lucky accident. He could find all persons ready to exchange food and clothes for money, because money was ready again to exchange for other articles of utility which they might require, and which they would more readily obtain by the money than by the food and clothes which our laborer had received for them. During the course of the unprofitable labor of waiting till he had found an exchanger who wanted coals, he might have perished. What, then, gave him the means of profitable labor, and furnished him with an article which every one was ready to receive in exchange for articles of immediate necessity? Capital in two forms. The heap of coals was capital. The coals represented a very great and various accumulation of former labor that had been employed in giving them value. The coals were altogether valueless till labor had been employed to raise them from the pit, and to convey them to the door of the man who was about to consume them. But with what various helps had this labor worked! Mere manual labor could have done little or nothing with the coals in the pit. Machines had raised them from the pit. Machines had transported them from the pit to the door of the consumer. They would have remained buried in the earth but for large accumulations of knowledge, and large accumulations of pecuniary wealth to set that knowledge in action by exchanging with it. The heap of coals represented all this accumulation; and it more immediately represented the Circulating Capital of consumable articles of utility, which had been paid in the shape of wages at every stage of the labor exercised in raising the