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The smallest fortune, the most insignificant establishment, the setting in motion of the lowest industry, demand the concurrence of so many different kinds of labor and skill, that one man could not possibly execute the whole of them. It is astonishing that the economists never have called attention to this fact. Strike a balance, then, between the capitalist's receipts and his payments.
An increase of the capitalist's share, for example, at the expense of wages, may lead to the lowered efficiency of the labourer; and, instead of the compensating process supposed to result from the stimulus to accumulation, the actual result may be a general degeneration of the industry.
A few weeks later, Tim one day received a message bidding him come to see his former master in the Tombs. The disgraced capitalist's trial was then in its early stages, but he entertained not the smallest hope of acquittal.
With the new machine the one man produces what ten men did before, but the product of the nine are credited to the machine and becomes the capitalist's gain. It is but a tool in the hands of the one man, who now with it produces as much as ten men did without it. If one does the work of ten he earns the reward of ten.
And so the revelry was laid away and buried, like carnival of a Shrove Tuesday, by masks wearied out with dancing, drunk with drunkenness, and quite ready to be persuaded of the pleasures of lassitude, lest they should be forced to admit their exhaustion. As soon as these bold spirits surrounded the capitalist's breakfast-table, Cardot appeared.
If the scale of the capitalist's operations was so small that he could not make a large saving in reduced labor cost by introducing machinery, then the introduction of such machinery put him at a crushing disadvantage as compared with larger capitalists.
'Make the labourer capital; the free system in Europe is a rotten system; let us get rid of that, and make all the labourers as much capital and as much the property of the capitalist and employer as the capitalist's cattle and horses are property, and then the whole system will move with that perfect ease and harmony which the world admires so much in the Southern States of America.
"The old fox," sneered Clayton, as he read the "rider" to the capitalist's letter. "Ferris will have my power of attorney, and he alone will communicate with me. If Alice's health demands it, I may vary my route and look around in the Sierras, or take the summer run to Alaska. I fear the heat of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. But all will depend upon the doctors and their advice.
Among the silent watchers, gazing in the fair face of the orphaned girl, there was no one who knew her other than as Alice Worthington. The calm majesty of Death had swept away from the dead capitalist's face all the anxious look of money cares. The pale lips were silent now, behind his broad brow the busy brain was settled forever.
His wages are part of the capitalist's 'costs of production. The capitalist virtually raises labourers, one may say, so long as raising them is profitable, just as he raises horses for his farm. Ricardo, in fact, points out that in some cases it may be for the farmer's interest to substitute horses for men.
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