Health, strength, education, mechanical skill, and all other useful personal gifts and acquirements are wealth, and every free man is a caxntalist to the extent of owning his own personal powers of body and mind. The health, strength, skill and intelligence of a slave are, however, as far as they are transferable, part of his master's capital.
The sun's warmth and light, air, rain, laud, and all other useful natural agents are wealth. Where they cannot be appropriated by any individual, the ownership is common to all, and all are capitalists; where they have been appropriated, as in the case of land, the owner becomes the sole capitalist as regards them.
The wealth of the world consists of natural agents which we receive unconditionally; of our personal mental and bodily acquirements; and of wealth which has been produced by the labour of man to eke out the supply that nature has unconditionally given, and which is not sufficient for our subsistence. This last we may call "commodities."
The stock of commodities in the world is perpetually being consumed and replaced by others produced by the unceasing labour of man. It is like the sea, from which the sun is perpetually taking away, but to which all that is taken away is returned by the rivers after it has passed over and fertilised the land. But for this circle of evaporation and rainfall, the earth would be a sterile waste; but for the circle of consumption and production, man would be reduced to a state no better than that of the brutes.
Our stock of commodities would not keep us alive more than two or three years at the furthest, and if labour ceased, that short time would see the almost total extinction of civilised man. "The accumulated wealth of centuries" is a thing of imagination. All the commodities in the world, which were not produced by the present generation, would not, even if converted by miracle into bread, at their exchange value as compared with that of bread, give us a single good meal. Accumulated capital there may be; that is, some families may increase, in every generation, their ownership of the wealth produced by others, but this can only be done to a small extent; the capital of all the banks in England represents but a very small part of the wealth which the labour of Englishmen produces every year.
It is not important to any individual in what form his capital may be. He may hold cash, or land, or he may have a stock of commodities in his store which would be of no use to himself, if he could not exchange them; but, by the help of trade, his capital will give him whatever form of exchangeable wealth he may wish. Practically, he is not the owner of any particular commodity but of a share, proportioned to his capital, of all the commodities of the world.
