same way as is the division of labor and results in an equally nice
adjustment. Each bit of capital, like each workman, becomes, as it
were, a specialist. It may take the shape of an instrument which is
capable of performing only its one service, like the loom, which is
capable of doing nothing except weaving; but even if the tool is
somewhat adaptable, like a hammer which can be used in several trades,
it is, as it were, stationed in one trade and held, by economic
influences, at that one point in the system. The house carpenter keeps
his hammer though the cabinet maker could use it. Each bit of capital
helps to create a particular utility, and the number of units of the
fund that each subgroup contains is, as we shall see, so arranged as
to enable the fund as a whole to do its utmost for the general good.
It is all without the use of force, since each bit of capital does
what its owner pleases to have it do.

_A Government Presupposed._--Of course there must be a government over
it all. Such a method of producing wealth could never continue unless
property were secure and unless it were made so without much effort on
the part of its owners. A blacksmith who should have at one moment to
use his hammer as a tool and at another to wield it as a weapon of
defense could make but poor headway, and a society in which such a
state of things existed in various trades would be too anarchic to
permit the elaborate division of trades which is the key to success in
industry. The most noticeable fact about organized production is that
man is forever letting go the thing he has made or helped to make and
allowing it to pass out of sight and reach without losing or greatly
imperiling his title to the amount of wealth it represents. He casts
his bread on the waters, but they bring him a return for it. Under
these circumstances it is impossible for him to protect his product as
the savage protects his tools, his clothing, and his hut. What a
modern worker makes passes into the hands of other men and gets
completely out of the maker's direct personal control. If he wanted it
again, he could never find it; and if he could find it, it would be in
a new shape and other men would have claims upon it. The man who has
sold some hides that in the end have become shoes can hardly identify
his product on the shelves of retail shoe dealers all over the
country, or perhaps all over the world. If by a miracle he could find
the particular bits of l