◆¹ Circulating Capital, or, as it is better to call it, Wage Capital, is practically a store of those things which wages are used to buy—that is to say the common necessaries of subsistence. And the primary function—the simplest and most obvious function—which such Capital performs is this: it enables men, by supplying them with the means of living, to undertake long operations, which when completed will produce much or be of much use, but which until they are completed will produce nothing and be of no use, and will consequently supply nothing themselves to the men whilst actually engaged in them. [Sidenote ◆1 A tunnel is a good instance of such work.] ◆¹ Let us imagine, for instance, a tunnel which pierces a range of mountains, and facilitates communication between two populous cities. Five hundred navvies, we will say, have to work five years to make it. Now if two yards of tunnel were made every day, and if each yard could be used as soon as made, the tolls of passengers would at once yield a daily revenue which would provide the navvies with subsistence, as their work proceeded. But as a matter of fact until the last day’s work is done, and the end of the fifth year sees the piercing of the mountain completed, the tunnel is as useless as it was when it was only just begun, and when it was nothing more than a shallow cavity in a rock. Five years must elapse before a single toll is paid, and before the tunnel itself supplies a single human being with the means of providing bread for even a single day. The possibility then of the tunnel being made at all, depends on the existence of a five-years’ supply of necessaries, for which indirectly the tunnel will pay hereafter, but in producing or providing which, it has had no share whatever. [Sidenote ◆1 But the above-mentioned function of Wage Capital is not its principal function in the modern world.] Wage Capital, in fact, imparts to industry the power of waiting for its own results. This is its simplest, its most obvious, and its primeval function. ◆¹ It has been the function of such capital from the days of the earliest civilisations; and it is, indeed, its fundamental function still: but in the modern world it is far from being its principal function. I call its principal functions in the modern world the functions by which during the past century and a quarter it has produced results so incomparably, and so increasingly greater, than were ever produced by it in the whole course of preceding ages. [Sidenote ◆1 Its principal function now is to enable a few men of exceptional powers to assist by these powers the exertions of the ordinary labourers.] [Sidenote ◆2 The modern employer in this respect differs from the ancient.] [Sidenote ◆3 Wage Capital in the modern world is the means by which exceptional intellect is lent to Labour.]