Page:Progress and poverty - an inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions, and of increase of want with increase of wealth - the remedy (IA progresspovertyi00georiala).pdf/186

160 the new plane to return to James. James would have taken the first ten days of the year to make another plane which would have lasted for 290 days, when he would have received a new plane from William. Thus, the simple return of the plane would have put each in the same position at the end of the year as if no borrowing had taken place. James would have lost nothing to the gain of William, and William would have gained nothing to the loss of James. Each would have had the return his labor would otherwise have yielded—viz., 290 planks, and James would have had the advantage with which he started, a new plane.

But when, in addition to the return of a plane, a plank is given, James at the end of the year will be in a better position than if there had been no borrowing, and William in a worse. James will have 291 planks and a new plane, and William 289 planks and no plane. And if William keeps on borrowing of James on the same terms, is it not evident that the income of the one will progressively decline, and that of the other will progressively increase, until the time will come when, as the result of the original lending of a plane, James will obtain the whole result of William's labor—that is to say, William will become virtually his slave?

Is interest, then, natural and equitable? There is nothing in this illustration to show it to be. Evidently what Bastiat (and many others) assigns as the basis of interest, "the power which exists in the tool to increase the productiveness of labor," is neither in justice nor in fact the basis of interest. The fallacy which makes Bastiat's illustration pass as conclusive with those who do not stop to analyze it, as we have done, is that with the loan of the plane they associate the transfer of the increased productive power which a plane gives to labor. But this is really not involved. The essential thing which James loaned to William was not the increased power which labor acquires from using planes. To suppose this, we should have to suppose that the making and using of planes was a trade secret or a patent right, when the illustration would become