nt on consumers' goods are not
always synchronous, but organization and the acquiring of a permanent
fund of capital make them so. Work to-day and you eat to-day food that
is a consequence of the working. In point of time the canoe makers are
fed as promptly as the fishermen, and this fact is duplicated in every
part of the industrial system. We shall later see more fully what this
signifies, but it is clear that any study of this phenomenon--the
synchronizing of labor and its reward--takes us out of the field of
Universal Economics, since it does not appear in the industry of
primitive beginnings, but is the fruit of organization.[9]

[8] One man might be employed in guarding canoes and fish
against theft, which is doing protective rather than
industrial labor; and economic forces would tend to give him
a share as large as each of the others receives, provided, of
course, that the men are of equal capacity as workers.

[9] The conception of capital goods as always putting
enjoyments into the future has crept into economic science
because in certain illustrations taken from primitive life
they seem to have that effect. We shall see that they do not
have it at all in _static_ social industry, and that they
have it only in a limited way in _dynamic_ social industry,
or that which is carried on by a society undergoing organic
change.

CHAPTER II

VARIETIES OF ECONOMIC GOODS

_Passive Capital Goods._--Labor spends itself on materials, and these,
in their rawest state, are furnished by nature herself. They "ripen"
as the work goes on. Every touch that is put on them imparts to them
more of the utility which is the essence of wealth. They are
technically "goods," or concrete forms of wealth, from the moment when
they begin to acquire this utility, though for a time they are in an
unfinished state. The function of materials, raw or partly finished,
in the physical operation of industry is a passive one, since they
receive utility and do not impart it. The iron is passive under the
blows of the blacksmith's hammer; leather is passive under the action
of the shoemaker's sewing machine; a log is passive under the action
of the lumberman's saw, etc. The materials which are thus receiving
utilities under the producers' manipulations constitute a distinct
variety of capital goods, while the implements which help to impart
the utilities constitute another variety, and