The Four Employments Of Capitals

⁹ The retailer’s capital replaces, with profits, the merchant’s capital from whom he buys goods.

It enables the merchant to continue his business.

The retailer is the only productive labourer whom it immediately employs.

His profits makes up the value which his capital adds to the national annual produce.

¹⁰ The capital of the wholesale merchant replaces, with profits, the capitals of the farmers and manufacturers he buys from.

• It enables them to continue their business.

In this way, the merchant indirectly supports the productive labour of society.

His capital also employs the sailors and carriers who transport his goods.

• This is all the productive labour which it immediately mobilizes.

His capital increases the price of those goods by the value of his profits and their wages.

• This is all the value which it immediately adds to the annual produce.

Its operation in these respects is much superior to that of the retailer’s capital.

¹¹ Part of the capital of the master manufacturer is employed as a fixed capital in the instruments of his trade.

It replaces, with profits, the fixed capital of other artificers whom he buys from.

Part of his circulating capital is employed in buying materials.

It replaces, with profits, the capitals of the farmers and miners whom he buys from.

But a great part of it is always distributed among the workers he employs.

It increases the value of those materials by their wages and by their masters’ profits

It immediately mobilizes more productive labour.

It adds a much greater value to the national annual produce than an equal capital of any wholesale merchant.

¹² The farmer’s capital mobilizes the most amount of productive labour.

His labouring servants and labouring cattle are productive labourers.

In agriculture, nature labours along with man.

The labour of nature is free, but its produce has its value.

The most important agricultural operations are intended not so much to multiply plants but to direct nature’s fertility towards the producing the plants most profitable to man.

A field overgrown with briars and brambles may frequently produce as many vegetables as the best cultivated vineyard or corn field.

Planting and tillage often regulates more than animating nature’s fertility.

Most of the work always remains to be done by nature.

The agricultural labourers and labouring cattle reproduce more value than their own consumption through their owner’s profits. They regularly reproduce the landlord’s rent in addition to the farmer’s profits. This rent is the produce of those powers of nature.

The use of those powers is lent by the landlord to the farmer.

This rent depends on the extent of those powers of nature, or according to the land’s fertility.

It is the work of nature which remains after deducting the work of man.

The work of nature is seldom less than 1/4.

It is frequently more than 1/3 of the whole produce.

No equal quantity of manufacturing labour can ever create such a great production because nature contributes no work in manufactures.

Production must always be in proportion to the strength of the agents that create it.

Agricultural capital mobilizes more productive labour than any equal amount of manufacturing capital.

It also adds a much greater value to the national annual produce through this productive labour.

Of all the ways capital can be employed, agriculture is by far the most advantageous to society.