of commerce, labour is to capital as fire to fuel: out of so much fuel, you can have only so much fire; but out of so much fuel you shall have so much fire,—not in proportion to the mass of combustible, but to the force of wind that fans and water that quenches; and the appliance of both. And labour is furthered, as conflagration is, not so much by added fuel, as by admitted air.[1]
51. For which reasons, I had to insert, in § 49, the qualifying "probably;" for it can never be said positively that the purchase-money, or wages fund of any trade is withdrawn from some other trade. The object itself may be the stimulus of the production of the money which buys it; that is to say, the work by which the purchaser obtained the means of buying it, would not have been done by him, unless he had wanted that particular thing. And the production of any article not intrinsically (nor in the process of manufacture)
- ↑ [The meaning of which is, that you may spend a great deal of money, and get very little work for it, and that little bad; but having good "air," or "spirit," to put life into it, with very little money, you may get a great deal of work, and all good; which, observe, is an arithmetical, not at all a poetical or visionary circumstance.]
