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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 86

"Capitalists."

"Capitalists."

A glance at Mr. Giffen's table will show how little of the material wealth of England is available for immediate, enjoyment or consumption, and how large a proportion is in the form of machinery to aid labor in the supply of our wants from day to day. The value of movable personal property, not employed as instruments of production, must be less than one-tenth of the total. Dwelling-houses, and the land attached to them, may amount to about two-tenths more. But occupying ownership of these properties is the exception, and most of them are used by their owners as an investment yielding rent, paid out of the earnings of working occupiers. The whole of the remainder consists of land and capital employed tor wealth-production in agriculture, mining, transport, and other industries, trades, and professions.

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Four-fifths of our national wealth, we may safely say, consists of such instruments. The wants of the community are supplied from year to year, and week to week, by the reciprocal services of the active workers who use and administer them. The worker, of whatever kind, is paid by a wage, a salary, a professional income, or profits due to his skill in organising or directing industry, the amount of which is determined by competition between himself and other workers. The owners of the instruments of production receive as rent and interest such an amount of the value of the produce as equalises the normal income of the workers in each calling; that is to say, they obtain from the workers who are using their land and capital a toll equal to the difference between the product of industry engaged in with any particular instrument of land or capital, and the product of the like industry engaged in with the least efficient instrument actually employed anywhere at the time.

Some of the workers are, it is true, themselves capitalists, that is to say, own larger or smaller amounts of land and capital; and many capitalists work. How many, and how much? Here are some facts gathered from the Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for 1890-91, and other reliable sources.