business as a
whole may, for a time, yield some such surplus; but in the absence of
monopolistic privileges no one business yields a large surplus for a
long time, and still less does business as a whole do so, though
profits may always be found somewhere within the system.

_The Final Productivity of Labor._--If we assume that the capital of
society is a fixed amount, we may perform an imaginary experiment
which will show how much labor really produces. We may set men at
work, a few at a time, until they are all employed, and we may measure
the product of each of the detachments. We should make the different
sections of the working force as similar to each other as it is
possible to make them and call each section a unit of labor. If there
were ten such divisions and if the quantity of capital were sufficient
to equip them all on the scale on which laborers are at present
actually equipped, it is clear that this amount of capital, when it
was lavished on one single section, must have supplied it with
instruments of production in nearly inconceivable profusion. What we
should to-day regard as a fair complement of capital for a thousand
men would nearly glut the wants of a hundred, and yet it is thinkable
that it should take such forms that they would be able to use it.

_Productivity of the First Unit of Labor._--We will set at work one
section which we have called one unit of labor and will put into the
hands of its members the whole capital which is designed ultimately to
equip the ten sections. It is very clear that the forms that this
capital will take cannot be the same that it will have to take when
the entire working force is using it. Indeed, we shall have to tax our
ingenuity to devise ways in which one unit of labor can utilize the
capital that will ultimately be used by ten. The tools and machines
will have to be few in number but very costly and perfect. We shall
have to resort to every device that will make a machine nearly
automatic and cause it to exact very little attention from the person
who tends it. The buildings will have to be of the most substantial
and durable kind. We shall have to spend money without stint wherever
the spending of it will make labor more productive than it would
otherwise be. If we do this, however, the product of the labor and its
equipment will be a very large one. The industry will succeed in
turning out indefinitely more goods than a modern industry actually
does, and th