Simplest cases are always the best in economical discussions. Let us take for illustration a recently observed case from the gold hills of North Carolina. All the methods are strongly primitive, but all the elements of production are present. A negro woman is the laborer, the bits of gold scattered in the soil are the free gift of nature, a bored log to divert the water from the mountain stream, and a tin pan in which to gather and wash the sand and gravel, are two crude forms of capital; free gravitation also brings the water through the log, and free gravity carries down the particles of gold to the bottom of the washing-pan, and many other agencies of free nature coöperate in this very simple case of production; and besides the log and the pan, there are doubtless some other forms of capital, at least the whittled plug to stop at need the flow of water through the log. The chief factor in these processes of production is still the laborer, the motions of her hands in stirring the sand and picking out the precious bits at the bottom of the pan are the chief motions, the labor is both physical and mental,--no animal could be trained to adopt means to ends like this negro woman. It is her capital that now engages our attention. _Any Valuable outside of man himself reserved to assist in the production of further valuables is Capital._ The idea of growth and increase inheres in the very word, which is derived from the Latin noun, _caput_, a head, a source, and gives intimation in its etymology of its scientific meaning. The word, _caput_, is often used in classical Latin for a sum of money put out at interest, and its derivative, _capitale_, is also used in the same sense, at least in mediæval Latin; and from this form of the word have come into English not only _Capital_, but also by corruption _Cattle_ and _Chattels_. Flocks and herds were at one time the principal riches of our Saxon ancestors, and also the principal means of _increasing_ their riches, and in process of time the same root-word came to be spelled differently as applied to animate or inanimate things of value; while the notion implied in the Latin _caput_, and in the English _source_, came along in all three of these words; and hence the careful definition of Capital above given.