Page:The Case for Capitalism (1920).djvu/64

 make himself the best apology he can for the necessary tools, put his boat together out of the rough planks which he is able to fashion, get his boat into the sea, himself into the boat, do his fishing and bring the fish home and eat them. He will then have applied strength and skill, will have got the raw material, made his tools, and given up his time during the passing of which he will have to be feeding himself out of accumulated stores of food. He will have taken the risk of the boat being unseaworthy, and of the fish being no more amenable a little way out from the shore, and of their being less pleasant to eat than those which he caught inshore. When a man is thus working on his own account, he is as near economic freedom as any one can expect to be in this world, who has not a store of accumulated capital to live on. He would only have to consider his own tastes and his own inclinations in organizing his economic activities; and yet we find that even in these circumstances, he is not able to free himself from any of the complications of production that have been enumerated above.

Although he knew when he started out on this project for improving his supply of fish that his desire for this form of diet was sufficiently strong to make him do the work and