capital advanced as wages may not have been one-fifth of 33 million pounds. It depends, among other things, upon the turn-over.
Let us take a simple illustration: I invest a capital of £200 in productive industry, £100 for raw material—the further consideration of which is immaterial for the present argument—and £100 as capital reserved for wages. Assuming the capital is turned over four times a year, and that the value added in the labor process, as in Australian manufactures, exceeds wages by 100 per cent, at the end of three months I realize the total capital advanced as wages, with an additional value of £100. The process is repeated in the second, third and fourth quarters of the year, at the end of which, with a smile of complacency at my munificence, I hand the Government official, whose business it is to collect such data, a return bearing the items, "wages paid, £400," "value added by manufacture, £800." The figures are duly published in the capitalist press, and the wages bill is exclusively dwelt upon to the exclusion of all else; the workers are castigated for "trying to cripple industry," and leading articles and speeches on "Industrial Efficency," if the same wages are to be maintained, are the order of the day. I wink the other eye, for deep down in the business department of my capitalistic heart I know that the total capital advanced by me as wages did not exceed £100 at any period during the year, and the rate of surplus value was, therefore, in reality, not 100 per cent, but 400. I began the old year with a capital of £100 reserved for wages. I enter the new with the same capital, after all dead expenses have been met, and a nice little bonus ungrudgingly handed over to me by the workers, who are duly grateful for my being so kind as to give them—work! They will be given "work" till eternity, provided they give me, as formerly, the product. Nay, I may also (provided the slave market is abundantly stocked, in case of trouble) take the tip of my "economic experts" and put the stop-watch and
