Care should be taken to distinguish between wealth, capital, and money. Capital may be succinctly defined as _saved wealth devoted to reproduction_, and the relations of the three terms mentioned may be illustrated by the following figure: The area of the circle, A, represents the wealth of a country; the area of the inscribed circle, B, the quantity out of the whole wealth which is saved and devoted to reproduction and called capital. But money is only one part of capital, as shown by the area of circle C. Wherefore, it can be plainly seen that not all capital, B, is money; that not all wealth, A, is capital, although all capital is necessarily wealth as included within it. It is not always understood that money is merely a convenient article by which other forms of wealth are exchanged against each other, and that a man may have capital without ever having any actual money in his possession. In times of commercial depression, that which is capital to-day may not to-morrow satisfy any desires (i.e., not be in demand), and so for the time it may, so to speak, drop entirely out of our circles above. For the moment, not having an exchange value, it can not be wealth, and so can the less be capital. [Illustration. Outer circle A, enclosing inner circle B, with small circle C overlapping edge of circle B.] Suppose, for instance, that the capitalist is a hardware manufacturer, and that his stock in trade, over and above his machinery, consists at present wholly in iron goods. Iron goods can not feed laborers. Nevertheless, by a mere change of the destination of the iron goods, he can cause laborers to be fed. Suppose that [the capitalist changed into wages what he had before spent] in buying plate and jewels; and, in order to render the effect perceptible, let us suppose that the change takes place on a considerable scale, and that a large sum is diverted from buying plate and jewels to employing productive laborers, whom we shall suppose to have been previously, like the Irish peasantry, only half employed and half fed. The laborers, on receiving their increased wages, will not lay them out in plate and jewels, but in food. There is not, however, additional food in the country; nor any unproductive laborers or animals, as in the former case, whose food is set free for productive purposes. Food will therefore be imported if possible; if not possible, the laborers will remain for a season on their short allowance: but the consequence of this change in the demand for commodities, occasioned by the change in the expenditure of capitalists from unproductive to productive, is that next year more food will be produced, and less plate and jewelry. So that again, without having had anything to do with the food of the laborers directly, the conversion by individuals of a portion of their property, no matter of