Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital [11]
of skill. The shoemaker who can thrust awls through leather with singular dexterity and neatness cannot make any use of a watchmaker's tools; and the most skilful and dexterous maker of plane, saw and chisel blades would find it difficult to construct with them any of that furniture which the cabinet maker forms with so much dispatch and beautiful effect. Almost every species of workman, however, from having acquired a certain dexterity in the use of his hands, and from having frequently seen the operations of other workmen, could learn the art of another man much better than a person who had never practised any kind of manual dexterity, and never seen it practised. But if a skilled labourer could not direct any kind of instruments so well as the man who has been constantly accustomed to use them, it is plain that the whole productive power of such instruments must depend altogether on the peculiar skill of the artisan and mechanic, who has been trained to practise different arts. Fixed capital, of whatever species, then, is only a costly production, costly to make, and costly to preserve, without that particular species of skill and labour which guides each instrument, and which, as I have before shown, is nourished, instructed and maintained by wages alone. The utility of the instruments the labourer uses can in no wise be separated from his skill. Whoever may be the owner of fixed capital -- and in the present state of society he who makes it is not, and he who uses it is not -- it is the hand and knowledge of the labourer which make it, preserve it from decay, and which use it to any beneficial end. For a nation to have fixed capital, then, and to make a good use of it, three things, and only three things, seem to me to be requisite. First, knowledge and ingenuity for inventing machines. No labourer would, I am sure, be disposed to deny to these their reward. But no subject of complaint is more general or more just than that the inventor of any machine does not reap the benefit of it. Of all the immense number of persons who have acquired large fortunes by the modern improvements in steam engines and cotton mills, Mr Watt and Mr Arkwright are the only two, I believe, who have been distinguished for their inventions, they also acquired wealth less as inventors than as capitalists. Mr Watt found a capitalist who appreciated his genius, and Mr Arkwright saved and borrowed the means of profiting by his own inventions. Thousands of capitalist have been enriched by inventions and discoveries of which they were not the authors, and capital, by robbing the inventor of his just reward, is guilty of stifling genius. The second requisite for having fixed capital is the manual skill and dexterity for carrying these inventions into execution. The third requisite is the skill and labour to use these instruments after they are made. Without knowledge they could not be invented, without manual skill and dexterity they could not be made, and without skill and labour they could not be productively used. But there is nothing more than the knowledge, skill and labour requisite on which the capitalist can found a claim to any share of the produce. Naturally and individually man is one of the most feeble and destitute of all created animals. His intelligence, however, compensates for his physical inferiority. After he has inherited the knowledge of several generations, and when he lives congregated into great masses, he is enabled by his mental faculties to complete, as it were, the work of nature, and add to his intelligence the physical powers of the lower animals. He directs his course on the waters, he floats in the air, he dives into the bowels of the earth, and all which its surface bears he makes tributary to his use. The gales which threaten at first to blow him from the earth, grind his corn, and waft to him a share in the treasures of the whole world. He creates at this pleasure the devouring element of fire, and checks its progress, so that it destroys only what he has no wish to preserve. He directs the course of the