“In a certain sense they might,” said Mr. Wallace; “for they might be turned into money, which could be employed productively. Furniture is one way of investing capital, though not a profitable one; but when I spoke of all our people being capitalists, I meant that all earned more than is absolutely necessary for them to spend; which is, I believe, the case, in the present prosperous state of our trade. Every man does, I believe, possess more than food for the hour, always excepting Paul: and that possession whether it be a shilling or fifty pounds, is capital at the time it is received, whether it be afterwards invested in furniture, which might be sold again, or lent out at interest, or made productive in any other way.” “But if that only is capital which is produced with a view to further production,” said Mr. Hollins, “I hope there are a good many among your three hundred labourers who are capitalists in this sense.” “Several,” said Mr. Wallace; “and such I reckon benefactors to society; but there are also many who, having a roof over their heads and something to cover them, are satisfied, and spend all their earnings as fast as they get them in a way which brings no return. Such men become, sooner or later, a burden to the community.” A deep sigh from Paul made the gentlemen look at him, and they were struck with the melancholy expression of his countenance. When he saw that he was observed, he roused himself and put in his word again. “I have heard people say you may see plants grow in a thunder-shower, and that the sun sees a baby grow in a summer’s day; but neither is so easy to be seen as the growth of capital. I should like to be by at the opening of a new iron-work,—not with all the helps that we have about us here,—but where people had only their wits and their hands to depend upon. That would be the place to watch capital from its birth, through all the stages of its nursing till it was full grown like yours.” “Let us hear your notion of the process, Paul. “I suppose it might occur to a shrewd man, finding a lump of the mineral melted in a very hot fire and hardened again, that it would make better tools than wood. He would heat his lump, and beat it with stones while it was hot, and bend it and notch it and sharpen it in a rude way, till he would be so much better off for tools than his neighbours, that they would try to get some like his. If they could not find any more ironstone, he would use his tools to dig or pick it out of the earth for them.” “Then, Paul, his tools would be his capital.”