Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 10.djvu/50

26 Commodities which are removed from the circle of consumption and reproduction practically cease to be wealth, and their owner to be a capitalist. A steam-engine which is not at work might as well be in the moon for all the usefulness to man which it possesses, and the owner gets no benefit from it. If instead of a steam-engine, a stock of food and clothing is stored up, it is also lost to the world; the selfish owner may live on it for years, but when it is consumed he has no more capital. Had he given his stock to workmen, on condition that they should work for him, he would have done them good, by furnishing them with food, and his stock of wealth would have been larger than ever, for labour can, under ordinary conditions, produce more than the labourers consume when producing it. Such a man is a miser in the truest meaning of the word; fortunately, no one does store up actual wealth in this way; if hoarded at all, it is always converted into capital in the form of gold, and the storing of gold does no mjury to the community. The hoarder loses a revenue which he might have had, but which he generously leaves to be divided between all his brother money-owners throughout the world.

The "actual cost" of a commodity may be said to be the labour which has been expended in producing it, including a proportionate part of that which had been expended in making the tools used in its prodiiction. If the commodity be made in an out-of-the-way place, the extra labour employed in conveying to the workmen, the food, clothing, and other things they consume, should also be added, the food itself, however, and the other things, or rather the labour of producing them should not be added, nor the labour equal to that necessary to convey them to people not living in an out-of-theway place, for they would have been consumed in any case, or if not, it would not be because the workmen were idle, but because they were not capitalists.

The "proper cost" of a commodity is the actual cost it would take, under fairly judicious direction, to produce a similar commodity or a different one which would be equally, and in the same manner, agreeable or useful to man. A chemist may spend great labour in digging minerals from the earth and extracting from them hydrogen and oxygen, and in makmg these combine to form water. The "actual cost" of the water thus produced would be the labour expended by the chemist; the "proper cost" would be the labour required to draw a bucket of water from the spring.

A disregard of this obvious distinction has cost, and is still costing the world very dearly, in false political economy, and is the root of half the popular errors in the theory of money.

There are so few commodities of which the actual and proper cost are greatly different that it is forgotten that they can be different.