kind of wealth that it first creates, namely, the canoe. This
immediate product of labor is itself a form of wealth and at once
rewards the laborer, since it is what he needs, though he does not
need it for consumption. Industry always pays as it goes and tolerates
no hiatus between labor and wealth in some form.

_Organized Industry immediately Productive of Consumers' Goods._--If
one man were keeping the stock of canoes of a few fishermen in repair
and taking as his pay a share of each day's catch, he would not have
to wait for his food any longer than the fishermen themselves. This
mode of conducting the industry, however, involves organization. If
each fisherman had to make his first canoe, it would be necessary for
him to wait for fish; but as soon as a stock of canoes has been
obtained and a special set of men assigned to the work of keeping this
stock intact in number and quality, that necessity entirely ceases.
Five men may do nothing but fish while a sixth keeps their stock of
canoes intact by repairing old ones left on the shore and making new
ones to replace such as are beyond repairing. Fishing and boat
building may go on simultaneously, and all the men may go share and
share in each day's catch.[8] This is a type of what goes on in modern
industry, where a complex stock of capital goods always exists and is
kept intact by the action of a class of persons who share the returns
that come from using the stock. None of these persons has to wait for
food, although some of them devote themselves exclusively to the
production of tools. This fact shows that the necessity for waiting,
as well as working, wherever instruments are in the process of
manufacture, is not among the universal phenomena of economics, and
that it is not present in that organized industry which we chiefly
study. Such a permanent stock of capital goods as the fishing
community of our illustration possesses would enable it to get its
food, the fish, day by day, by working in different ways and using the
permanent stock. If we call this permanent supply of canoes, etc.,
_capital_, it is, _in a causal way_, mediate wealth, though it is not
so in point of time. Some labor is spent each day on it, and itself
creates each day some consumers' wealth. These two operations go on
simultaneously, and the men who work to maintain the stock and those
who use it get their returns together. In very primitive life the work
spent on capital goods and that spe