Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/706

 THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL motive; and the profits are so irregular because they are speculative. His method of making a living is that he takes his wealth, and throws it all into solution in the productive process, in the hope that it will appear again after many days in the shape of a greatly increased quantity of products, containing, on the whole, a surplus of value. Personally, he will expect or hope that the surplus value will be very much greater than what we call interest. The one thing certain is that, in the worst case, the surplus will be enough to represent the difference between the value of present and of future goods. If, on the whole, it were not to show that amount, there would be an ebb in the tide of saving, which would call forth the agio necessary to tempt the capitalist. It will be objected that there is a difference between interest in this case and interest on the loan pure and simple. The dif- ference is not in nature. Interest would be obtainable on goods lent for consumption, although there were now as little capitalist production as in the days when the Mosaic law forbade and allowed it. In all societies there have been saving and spendthrift, and he who cast his bread upon the waters of usury could always find it and more--after many days. Interest is primarily a result of the phenomena of human nature already mentioned, and is not a new creation of capitalist production. But in modern circum- stances a new importance has been given to interest in the fact that Time plays so large a part in economic processes. Economic provision now lays its lines far ahead. An entire class has arisen who live by the difference between present and future goods, and another class h'as been put in a peculiar position of dependence from that very fact. In a word, interest is the difference between the value of present and future goods, and the great characteristic of the present-day industry is that it accentuates the importance of time and actually elevates it into an element in production. But this does not change the character of interest. It only bases a regular income on the old fact: the rate of interest is simply the putting into figures made possible by continual time bar- gains of capitalist undertaking--of the universal under-valuation of future goods. The third case of interest takes the shape of income got from durable goods, usually called Hire, or Lease, and, in one case, Rent. The distinction between a perishable and a durable good is that, while both are the sum of their respective uses, the durable good is a sum extending over a period of time. Now, in conso- nance with all that has been said, the later services of such a