Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/112

 that in fact under modern conditions of production all the machinery that is provided by capital is actually made by labour. The wage-earners build the railways, dig out and fetch the raw material, and put it through the processes that make it into machinery. But labour has done all this under direction provided by managers working for capital and paid by capital, and labour could not have done it if capital had not paid it wages out of previously accumulated stores, which capital paid for out of money that it earned or got by some service or action for which it was paid by the then existing sense of the community. Capital and labour both live to an extent that few of us realize on the exertions of those who have gone before, directed and paid for by those who had the control of industry that is given by wealth. If the owners of that wealth had spent it on immediate enjoyment instead of equipping the country with productive machinery, so as to earn a profit for themselves and their successors, the country could not have maintained a fraction of its present population, and many of those who now denounce the capitalist as an exploiter or a thief would never have been born. They owe their very existence to the alleged exploiter.