may call it, Wage Capital—we will speak presently. ◆³ We will speak at first of Fixed Capital only; and of this we will take the most essential part, namely machinery; and for convenience sake we will omit the accidental part, namely buildings, which render merely the passive service of shelter. [Sidenote ◆1 We shall see that machinery adds to the product of Labour in the same way that a superior soil adds to it;] Now in any operation of manufacturing raw material, or—what means the same thing—conveying raw material, say water or coal or fish, to the places where they are to be consumed, certain machines or appliances are necessary to enable the operation to take place well. Thus fish or coal could hardly be carried without a basket, whilst water could certainly not be carried without some vessel, nor in many places raised from its source without a rope and pail. For all purposes therefore of practical argument and calculation, appliances of these most simple and indispensable kinds are merged in Human Exertion, just as is the case with the poorest kind of Land, and are not credited separately with any portion of the result. We do not say the man raised so much water, and the rope and the pail so much. We say the man raised the whole. ◆¹ But the moment we have to deal with appliances of an improved kind, by which the result is increased, whilst the labour remains the same, the case of the appliances becomes analogous to that of superior soils; and a portion of the result can be assigned to them, distinct from the result of Labour. [Sidenote ◆1 As a certain simple instance will show.] ◆¹ Let us suppose, for instance, that a village gets all its water from a cistern, to keep which replenished takes the labour of ten men constantly raising the water by means of pails and ropes, and then carrying it to the cistern, up a steep wearisome hill. These men, we will say, receive each _one pound_ a week, the village thus paying for its water _five hundred pounds_ a year, the whole of which sum goes in the remuneration of labour. We will suppose, further, that the amount of water thus obtained is _a thousand_ gallons daily, each man raising and carrying _a hundred_ gallons; and that this supply, though sufficient for the necessities of the villagers, is not sufficient for their comfort. They would gladly have twice that amount; but they are not able to pay for it. Such is the situation with which we start. We have _a thousand_ gallons of water supplied daily by the exertion of ten men, or _a hundred_ gallons by the exertion of each of them.