uired to support labourers while they are engaged in
productive work.# It is called circulating because it does not last
long; potatoes and cabbages are eaten up, and a new supply has to be
grown; clothes wear out in a few months or a year, and new ones have to
be bought. The circulating capital, which is in the country now, is not
the same circulating capital which was in the country two years ago. But
the fixed capital is nearly the same: some factories may have been burnt
or pulled down; some machines may have become worn out, and have been
replaced by new ones. But these changes in fixed capital are
comparatively few; whereas the whole or nearly the whole of the
circulating capital is changed every year or two.

But the fact is that we cannot distinguish so easily as we may seem to
do between fixed and circulating capitals; there may be kinds of capital
which are neither quite fixed nor quite circulating, but something
between the two. Flour is soon eaten up, and is circulating capital. A
flour mill lasts fifty years, perhaps, and may certainly be called fixed
capital; a flour sack lasts about ten years on an average. Is such a
sack fixed or circulating capital? It seems to me difficult to say. In
the case of a railway, the coal and oil wanted for the engine are used
up at once, and are clearly circulating capital; the railway wagons last
about ten years, the locomotive engines twenty years or more; the
railway stations last at least thirty years; there is no reason why the
bridges and tunnels and embankments should not last hundreds of years
with proper care. Thus we see that #capital is altogether a question of
time, and we must say that capital is more fixed as it endures or
continues useful a longer time; it is more circulating in proportion as
it is sooner worn out or destroyed, and thus requires to be more
frequently replaced#.

#35. How Capital is obtained. Capital is the result of saving or
abstinence#, that is, it can only be obtained by working to produce
wealth, and then not immediately consuming that wealth. The poor savage
who has to labour hard every day for fear that he may have to go without
food, has no capital; but when he has food in hand, and can employ
himself in making bows and arrows to facilitate the capture of animals,
he is investing capital in the bows and arrows. Whenever we work in this
way for a future purpose, we are living on capital and investing it. The
abstinence (Latin, _abs_, fr