In 1867 the engineers and firemen received 20-865/1000 per cent. of total cost. In 1886 the engineers and firemen received 39-627/1000 per cent. of total cost. These illustrations from the railroads are plainly indicative of a general truth of the utmost importance in Political Economy, namely, _that all increase of Capital and all inventions and improvements in its practical application, while it redounds to the benefit of capitalists as a class, redounds in a still higher degree to the benefit of laborers as a class_. Let us now attend for a moment to the convincing Proof of this truth in two phases of such proof, and also to a cheering conclusion that follows it. (a) As any country grows older in time and richer through abstinence, and as the whole world thus grows older and richer, the tendency there and everywhere towards a general decline in the rate _per centum_ for the use of capital becomes patent and universal. The rate of interest on money loaned, and the rate of profits on capital used, tend all the while to go down as and because capital accumulates. No one will dispute this as a simple fact of history. And no economist will dispute, that this is just what we might expect beforehand as a corollary from the admitted proposition, that, other things being equal, an increased Supply of anything means a lessened Value for any specific part of it. Three centuries ago in England the legal rate of interest was 10%, while now the current rate is about 4% in that country, and has been considerably lower than that in Holland, although in both countries and everywhere else there are temporary interruptions and reactions in the constant tendency now being considered. During the first years of mining operations in California, from 8% to 15% per month with security of real estate was paid for the use of money, which enormous rates long ago declined to rates not much higher than those paid in the States along the Mississippi River, and in these also the rates are all the while approximating those current in the older Eastern States, whose own rates too are slowly declining. But, while there is a less rate of profit or interest on each 100 invested, there are many more hundreds capitalized; consequently, there is an absolute gain to capitalists as a class, at once in the aggregate amount of the capital and in the aggregate sum of the profits from it, since no capitalist would have a motive to capitalize further under the smaller rates of profit, unless the aggregate of profits under the new conditions were greater than under the old condition of higher rates; and, as much of this accumulating capital in order to become productive must now be offered to laborers in the form of wages, we might almost pronounce beforehand, that it would prove both an absolute and also a _relative_ gain to laborers as a class. And so it is.