Here is your farmer with all the requisite knowledge and the natural forces at his disposal. He has enough good land provided him to produce a harvest of 100 sacks of wheat if he is able and willing to apply his manual labour and intelligence to this land. But he must be kept alive during the many months required for the growth of the wheat. It is no use his beginning operations, therefore, unless he has a stock of food; for if he had not such a stock he would die before the harvest was gathered. Again, he must have seed. He must have enough seed to produce at the end of those months one hundred sacks of wheat. So we see that at the very least, for this particular case of production, the natural forces about him and his own energies would not be of the least use to the production of the harvest unless there were this third thing, a stock of wheat both for sowing and for eating. But that is not all. He must be sheltered from the weather; he must be clothed and he must have a house, otherwise he would die before the harvest was gathered. Again, though he might grow a very little wheat by putting in what seed he could with his hands into a few suitable places in the soil, he could not get anything like the harvest he was working for unless he had special implements. He must prepare the land with a plough; so he must have a plough; and he must have horses to draw the plough; and those horses must be kept alive while they are working, until the next harvest comes in; so he must have a stock of oats to feed them with. All this means quite a large accumulation of wealth before he can expect a good harvest: the wealth attaching to clothes, houses, food, ploughs, horses for a year. In general, we find that man, when he is setting out on a particular piece of production of wealth, is absolutely compelled to add to his energies, and to the natural forces at his disposal, a third element consisting of _certain accumulations of wealth made in the past_--an accumulation of food, clothing, implements, etc.--without which the process of production could not be undertaken. _This accumulation of_ ALREADY-MADE WEALTH, _which is thus absolutely necessary to production_, we call _CAPITAL_. It includes _all kinds of wealth whatsoever which man uses_ WITH THE OBJECT OF PRODUCING FURTHER WEALTH, _and without which the further wealth could not be produced_. It is a reserve without which the process of production is impossible. Later on we shall see how very important this fact is: for every healthy man has energy, and natural forces are open to all, but _capital_ can sometimes be controlled by very few men. If they will not allow their capital to be used, wealth cannot be produced by the rest; therefore those who, by their labour, produce wealth may be driven to very hard conditions by the few owners of Capital, whose leave is necessary for any wealth to be produced at all.