Page:The complete works of Henry George vol. 1.djvu/211

 deepening of a riverbed, the construction of lighthouses, or the erection of a public market; or supposing, to embody the same idea while changing the illustration, they have been issued by a railroad company. Here they do represent capital, existing and applied to productive uses, and like stock in a dividend paying company may be considered as evidences of the ownership of capital. But they can be so considered only in so far as they actually represent capital, and not as they have been issued in excess of the capital used. Nearly all our railroad companies and other incorporations are loaded down in this way. Where one dollar's worth of capital has been really used, certificates for two, three, four, five, or even ten, have been issued, and upon this fictitious amount interest or dividends are paid with more or less regularity. Now, what, in excess of the amount due as interest to the real capital invested, is thus earned by these companies and thus paid out, as well as the large sums absorbed by managing rings and never accounted for, is evidently not taken from the aggregate produce of the community on account of the services rendered by capital—it is not interest. If we are restricted to the terminology of economic writers who decompose profits into interest, insurance, and wages of superintendence, it must fall into the category of wages of superintendence.

But while wages of superintendence clearly enough include the income derived from such personal qualities as skill, tact, enterprise, organizing ability, inventive power, character, etc., to the profits we are speaking of there is another contributing element, which can only arbitrarily be classed with these—the element of monopoly.

When James I. granted to his minion the exclusive privilege of making gold and silver thread, and prohibited, under severe penalties, every one else from making such thread, the income which Buckingham enjoyed in aonsequence did not arise from the interest upon the