_Accumulated energies._—The force accumulated through personal effort in training, education and discipline is similar to capital in the fact that it represents a period of time between the effort and its full accomplishment, and that it is devoted to production of wealth. It differs from capital in being immaterial human energy, exceedingly useful in combination with capital, but a part of the laborer, not his tools. It is gained by devoting time, attention, thought and practice to acquiring methods of greatest efficiency in any act of labor. It requires surplus energy in labor at any task to gain, not only the material result, but power to do the same task better and more easily next time. All the time expended in acquiring such powers is put into the value of what is finally produced. Any peculiar tact or ability developed becomes an essential part of individual powers, and its product, like that of any form of exertion, becomes the property of the individual. In this way, not only is the cost of gaining skill or education, or of establishing habits, returned in the product, but often a considerable increment, or gain, from the larger demand for such abilities. A skilled artisan’s labor meets more urgent demands for its use. _Skill._—If this extra exertion takes the form of training muscles, nerves and brain to act with speed and accuracy as judgment directs, we call the attainment _skill_. Even if the action required is simple, dexterity comes only by practice, and in special cases may multiply the product many times. Two men may shear sheep with equal accuracy, but one has three times the speed of the other. His skill secures employment at three times the wages of the other, with profit to the employer, because the extra speed saves room, attendance and risk over employing three men at one-third the rate. The shearer profits by the rarity of his skill in getting the wages of three men, with the support of but one, and in more constant employment. When the operation is more complex, and success involves larger interests, skill counts indefinitely more, and as society grows complex the room for exercise of skill becomes larger and more varied. The wide difference between pioneer farming and market-gardening illustrates this. The history of agriculture shows the slow development of skill in the furrow, the ditch and hedge, and in the handling and breeding of stock. Farmers once barely scratched an acre a day with their rude plow and were long in learning the use of a harrow. No attempt, according to Professor Rogers, to improve the breeds of cattle and sheep appeared before the eighteenth century in England. Most early improvements in farming skill came from the industrious monks, whose intelligence fostered skill.