“Certainly: his tools would be capital arising from labour, and tending to further production. His neighbours would pay him well in such produce as they could spare for furnishing them with iron, and then they would all set about making tools. They would soon find that they could get on faster and better by dividing their labour, and so one would keep up the fire, and another would see that the ore flowed into the hole as it should do; and another would beat it while soft, and another would notch it into a saw, and another sharpen it into an axe.” “Very well, then. As there must be labour before capital, there must be capital before division of labour.” “To be sure. There would be nothing for them to divide their labour upon if they had not the ironstone, which is their capital as much as the man’s first tool is his.—The more tools they make, the more ore they can procure.” “So the division of labour assists the increase of capital.” “There is the beauty of it,” replied Paul. “They play into one another’s hands. Labour makes capital; capital urges to a division of labour; and a division of labour makes capital grow. When the people we are talking of are all supplied with tools, (which have gone on improving all this time in the quality of the metal as well as the make of the implements,) they begin to traffic with the next district, bartering their manufacture for whatever productions they may agree to take in exchange. As their manufacture improves, they get more wealth; and then again, as they get more wealth, their manufacture improves; they find new devices for shortening their labour; they make machines which do their work better than their own hands could do it, till an iron-work becomes what we see it here,—a busy scene where man directs the engines whose labour he once performed; where earth and air and fire and water are used for his purposes as his will directs; and a hundred dwellings are filled with plenty where, for want of capital, men once wrapped themselves in skins to sleep on the bare ground, and cut up their food with flints.—So, now that I have given you the natural history of capital as I read it, I will wish you good morning and go to my work.” “Paul, you astonish me,” said Mr. Wallace. “How is it that one who understands so well the history of wealth should be so destitute?”