Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of WealthGeorge, Henry
General
Progress and Poverty, Volumes I and II: An Inquiry into the Cause of Industrial Depressions and of Increase of Want with Increase of Wealth
George, Henry
Economics; Single tax
Capital does not maintain laborers during the progress of their work,
as is erroneously taught. Laborers are maintained by their labor, the
man who produces, in whole or in part, anything that will exchange for
articles of maintenance, virtually producing that maintenance.
Capital, therefore, does not limit industry, as is erroneously taught,
the only limit to industry being the access to natural material. But
capital may limit the form of industry and the productiveness of
industry, by limiting the use of tools and the division of labor.
That capital may limit the form of industry is clear. Without the
factory, there could be no factory operatives; without the sewing
machine, no machine sewing; without the plow, no plowman; and without
a great capital engaged in exchange, industry could not take the
many special forms which are concerned with exchanges. It is also as
clear that the want of tools must greatly limit the productiveness
of industry. If the farmer must use the spade because he has not
capital enough for a plow, the sickle instead of the reaping machine,
the flail instead of the thresher; if the machinist must rely upon
the chisel for cutting iron; the weaver on the hand loom, and so
on, the productiveness of industry cannot be a tithe of what it is
when aided by capital in the shape of the best tools now in use.
Nor could the division of labor go further than the very rudest and
almost imperceptible beginnings, nor the exchanges which make it
possible extend beyond the nearest neighbors, unless a portion of the
things produced were constantly kept in stock or in transit. Even the
pursuits of hunting, fishing, gathering nuts, and making weapons
could not be specialized so that an individual could devote himself to
any one, unless some part of what was procured by each was reserved
from immediate consumption, so that he who devoted himself to the
procurement of things of one kind could obtain the others as he wanted
them, and could make the good luck of one day supply the shortcomings
of the next. While to permit the minute subdivision of labor that is
characteristic of, and necessary to, high civilization, a great amount
of wealth of all descriptions must be constantly kept in stock or in
transit. To enable the resident of a civilized community to exchange
his labor at option with the labor of those around him and with the
labor of men in the most remote parts of the globe, there must be
stocks of goods in warehouses, in stores, in the holds of ships, and in
railway cars, just as to enable the denizen of a great city to draw at
will a cupful of water, there must be thousands of millions of gallons
stored in reservoirs and moving through miles of pipe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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