men, by whom the records are multiplied. The second objection was
expressed by one of my critics thus: "I say that all productive effort
is labour.... I dare you to tell any one of these genii that they are
not labourers." Another critic said: "Just as 'land' in economics means
all the forces of nature, so does 'labour' mean all the forces of man.
Why, then, speak of ability?" These criticisms are purely verbal. If we
like to take "labour" as a collective name for all forms of human
effort, we can of course do so; but in that case we must find other
differential names for the different forces of effort individually. To
give them all the same name is not to explain them. It is to tie them
all up in a parcel.

[2] If this fact requires any further exemplification, we can find one
on a large scale in the pages of Marx himself. According to him the
first appreciable capitalistic movement--the first leaping of the modern
system in the womb--took place in the English cloth trade about four
hundred years ago. Now, if capitalism were merely, as according to Marx
it is, a passive monopoly by some men of implements which have been
produced by others, the pioneers of capitalism in the reign of Henry
VIII. would have got into their possession all the hand-looms then in
use; they would have taken their toll in kind from all whom they allowed
to use them; and there the matter would have ended. The looms of to-day
would be the looms of four hundred years ago. The passive ownership of
machines does nothing to improve their construction. If a gang of
ignorant thieves could steal all the watches in America, and then let
them out to the public at so much a month or year, this would not
convert the three-dollar watches into chronometers. And how little mere
labour, or the experience gained by labour, tends to improve the
implements which the labourer uses is shown by the fact that the looms
which wove Anne Boleyn's petticoats were practically the same as the