It makes no difference whether the colored woman bored her own log by means of an item of capital already existing, namely, an auger, or hired another person to bore it for her, or bought the log already perforated, it is an article of Capital, a valuable kept to increase future valuables; she might doubtless sell it for something to a new-comer wishing to operate other sand in the neighborhood, but she keeps it to help herself gather more gold for ultimate sale, she practises what we call in Economics _abstinence_ and must have her reward for this in the form of _profits_ from the ultimate sale of her commodity, gold, as well as a reward for her labor in the form of _wages_ from the same source. As one person furnishes both the labor and capital in this case, there is no actual division of the gross return into wages and profits, as there always must be when separate parties furnish the two essential factors, both of which must be remunerated by the sale of the commodity. What is thus true of the log, is equally true of the tin-pan, and even of the plug also, if it be capable of repeated use and cost something of labor and the help of a previous item of capital, namely, the jack-knife. Our negro woman of the South is a small capitalist as well as a rude laborer, and practises _abstinence_ as well as puts forth _exertion_, and consequently is entitled to receive _profits_ as well as _wages_ in the return she gets for her gold-dust when she sells it. We are now beginning to see what the nature of Capital is, and what the motives are for employing it. In the production of commodities Capital is always something that makes easier to the producers the getting ready to sell and the selling of future commodities. The capital always spares more or less of onerous and irksome human exertion. It always mediates between some free force of Nature and some otherwise more onerous effort of men. The sole motive to employ capital in any one or in all of its multitudinous forms from the simplest to the most complex is to throw off upon the ever-willing shoulders of Nature some part of the irksome effort that would otherwise come to the easily-wearied muscles of men. Nature is "good," to use a commercial term, for all she can be made to carry of men's work, through implements devised and machinery contrived to apply, to commodities in every stage of their transformation and transportation till the last, the ever-present potencies of this physical world. These potencies cost nothing. The implements and machinery cost much in present labor and previously created capital. The ultimate sale of commodities must make return for all the forms of capital employed in their production, in the shape of Profits, the reward of _abstinence_; and for all the forms of direct labor employed in their production, in the shape of Wages, the reward of personal _effort_.