apital a time-saver._--All these forms of wealth serve in production by
extending the possible waiting between an effort of any kind and the
greater satisfaction secured by it. No community could begin farming as a
business until it had secured housing and seeds and tools and provisions
in some form for most of a year's sustenance. All the capital that
constructs a great thoroughfare is used in getting ready to satisfy wants
in many future years. Capital furnishes subsistence for laborers of every
kind during those years of waiting for a product. This is true capital,
because the object of its use is a greater product of wealth; but the
product may be long delayed. So all accumulated wealth in every form
represents sustained labor during the past. Professor Taussig estimates
the accumulation of subsistence in all existing goods at five years of
labor for the community. The total value of farms in our country is just
about five times the average annual product of the farms, though a large
portion of the land is unused.

_Capital circulating or fixed._--A further distinction is desirable between
capital in food, fuel or stock in trade, which may be turned at a single
use into new wealth, and capital in buildings, bridges, roads and farms,
which may be used many times in adding new wealth before they entirely
disappear or give place to new forms of capital. The first is called
circulating capital, and the last fixed capital.

The degree of permanence in fixed capital is indefinite of course--even
drains vary in permanence--and the line between the two is not always
easily drawn, yet the distinction is real. Most men distinguish "the
plant" in any enterprise from "the current supplies," and realize that
some fit proportion exists between them. A farm well equipped can not be
handled to advantage without a proportional investment in current
supplies. Many a renter cannot pay his rent for want of means to work his
farm profitably. If the farm were given him, he would still be hampered by
the same lack of consumable goods to turn at once into larger products.
Many a "land poor" farmer would gain at once by exchange of acres for more
"current supplies" for his farming, such as food for help, feed for teams
and stock, seed or fertilizers for his crops, or young stock to consume
the raw product of his fields. In the fourteenth century the stock of
European farms was worth three times the value of the farms. Similar
conditions are