discovered a lot of fish. I broke some branches off a tree, and
with this I brushed the fish out of the pool. I sold them to a
teamster for ten cents. With this I bought shoe blacking and a
shoe brush and spent my Saturdays blacking boots for travelers at
the depot and the hotel. I had established a boot-blacking
business which I pushed in my spare time for several years. My
brush and blacking represented my capital. The shining of the
travelers' shoes was labor. I was a capitalist but not an
employer; I was a laborer but not an employee.

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital," said Lincoln.
This is true. I labored to break the branches from the tree
before I had any capital. They brought me fish, which were
capital because I traded them for shoe blacking with which I
earned enough money to buy ten times more fish than I had caught.

So labor is prior to capital--when you use the words in their
right meaning. But call the employee "labor" and the employer
"capital," and you make old Honest Abe say that the employee is
prior to and independent of the employer, or that the wage earner
is independent of the wage payer or, in still shorter words, the
man is on the job before the job is created. Which is nonsense.

Capital does not always mean employer. A Liberty Bond is
capital but it is not an employer; the Government is an employer
but it is not capital, and when any one is arguing a case for an
employee against his employer let him use the proper terms. The
misuse of words can cause a miscarriage of justice as the misuse
of railway signals can send a train into the ditch.