to the aid of production. It is wealth in the course of
exchange, for production includes not merely the making of things, but
the bringing of them to the consumer. Wherever we analyse the facts we
find that without production wages would not, and could not, be. As the
rendering of labour precedes the payment of wages, and as the rendering
of labour in production implies the creation of value, the employer
receives value before he pays out value--he but exchanges capital of one
form for capital of another form. Hence the payment of wages in
production never involves the advance of capital or ever temporarily
lessens capital.

Nor is it true that the maintenance of labour is drawn from capital, and
that therefore population regulates itself by the funds which are to
employ it, for that would involve the idea that labour cannot be exerted
until the products of labour are saved, thus putting the product before
the producer, which is absurd. Capital, therefore, does not limit
industry, the only limit to industry being the access to natural
material. Capital may limit the form of industry, and the productiveness
of industry, by limiting the use of tools and the division of labour.
The functions of capital are to assist labour in production with tools,
seeds, etc., and with the wealth required to carry on exchanges. All
remedies, whether proposed by professors of political economy or working
men, which look to the alleviation of poverty either by the increase of
capital, or the restriction of the number of labourers, or the
efficiency of their work, must be condemned.

The argument that wages are determined by the ratio between capital and
labour finds its strongest support in the Malthusian doctrine, and on
both is based the theory that past a certain point the application of
capital and labour yields a diminishing return. The Malthusian doctrine
is that the tendency to increase in the number of labourers must always
tend to reduce wages to the minimum on which labourers can reproduce.
When this theory is subjected to the test of straightforward analysis,
it is utterly untenable. In the first place, the facts marshalled in
support of it do not prove it, and the analogies drawn from the animal
and vegetable world do not countenance it; and, in the second place,
there are facts which conclusively disprove it.

There are on every hand the most striking and conclusive evidences that
the production and consumption of wealth ha