_Varieties of Active Capital Goods._--Mere hand tools act as armatures attached to the person of the worker, and they enable him effectively to attack resisting substances. The hammer fortifies the blacksmith's hand against the injuries it would suffer if he delivered blows with his fist, and it multiplies the efficiency of the blows. Machines, however, substitute themselves for the person of the worker and carry the tool through its movements. A steam hammer, so called, is an engine that gets power from a boiler and wields an armature, which is the real hammer, much as a smith would do it, though with far greater force and effect. Machines do rapidly and accurately what a manual laborer would, without them, have to do slowly and imperfectly, by carrying the armature in his own hand and moving it by his own muscular strength. Tools and machines impart "form utility" to materials. Vehicles which carry goods impart "place utility" to them by putting them where they are more useful than they would be elsewhere. Buildings protect goods and workers alike, and enable the operation of transforming them to go on successfully. They also make it possible to store goods at a time when they are not needed and take them out for use when they are needed. In doing this, buildings help to impart "time utility" to the merchandise that is put into them by keeping them intact till the time comes when they will be useful. Tools, machines, reservoirs of water, canals, roadways, buildings, and even land itself are active capital goods, and are, for that reason, component elements of that part of the permanent productive fund which is known as fixed capital. They aid workers in their efforts to bring materials into usable shapes, and this is as true of the hole in the earth in which a savage stores provisions as it is of a fireproof warehouse in a modern city. _Materials which are at first Passive and later pass into the Active State._--The hammer itself has to be made out of raw material, and, while it is in the making, the material that enters into it is as passive as anything else. While the ore is smelting and while the steel is forging, the future hammer is in a preliminary stage of its existence and is discharging a passive function. When it is completely finished, its period of activity begins, and from this time on it helps to manipulate other things. The materials which enter into consumers' goods go through no such transition. The leather remains passive till, in the form of a pair of shoes, it clothes its user's feet; and at this point it ceases to be a capital good at all. The steel of the hammer is first a passive good and later an active one.