◆¹ Now, the powers of these men resemble a mass of fluid metal which is capable of being run into any variety of mould. If the directors were bound by no articles of association, and if, at their first board meeting, before they had entered into any contract for the machinery, some other invention for the manufacture of some other commodity were suddenly brought to their notice, and happened to take their fancy, the men they were on the point of employing to produce one kind of machinery might, with equal ease, be employed to produce another. We will assume that the machinery which the men are set to produce actually is a great improvement on anything of the kind used hitherto, and ends in adding greatly to the productive powers of the nation; but, so far as the men are concerned whose exertions are paid for out of the capital of the company, the machinery might just as well have been absolutely valueless—a mere aggregation of wheels and axles, as meaningless as a madman’s dream. What makes their exertions not only useful instead of useless, but more useful than any exertion similarly applied had ever been hitherto, is, firstly, the ingenuity of the inventor of the new machine; secondly, the judgment of the promoters and directors of the company; and lastly, the confidence in their judgment felt by the subscribing public. Or, we may suppose the inventor to have himself supplied the Capital, and to unite in himself the parts of the directors and the shareholders. In that case the exertions of the men employed derive their value entirely from the talent of this one man. The men employed by him, we will say, number a thousand, and the Wage Capital he owns and administers aids and increases production only because it is the means by which the one man induces the thousand to accept him as the steersman of their exertions, and to allow him to direct their course towards new and remote results which for them lie hidden behind the horizon of contemporary habit or ignorance. [Sidenote ◆1 The case of Arkwright’s spinning-frame illustrates this.]