or of a special
and very superior sort. The salary which the head of a corporation
receives, the fees that its lawyers get, the fees that come to eminent
surgeons or engineers, are all payments for labor; and these, taken
together with the earnings of well-paid artisans, successful farmers,
and very many others, constitute the second contribution to
accumulating capital. Savings from simple interest itself constitute
the third contribution.[1]

[1] Gains which come from holding land which rises in value
more rapidly than the interest on the price of it
accumulates, is to be rated as part of net _entrepreneur's_
profits.

Now, of these sources of income, net profits and the wages of superior
labor are transient, and the profits are particularly so. The man
whose mill earns fifty per cent in a particular year would be foolish
in the last degree if he used all that as income. That would mean
brief and riotous enjoyment, followed by a most painful fall from the
standard so established. He will naturally spend some part of the
phenomenal dividend and lay aside enough of it to afford a guarantee
that his future income will not fall below the present one. The man
who during the best years of his working life enjoys a salary or
professional fees amounting to a hundred thousand dollars a year would
be almost equally foolish if he were to spend it all as he earns it,
leaving his family unprovided for and his own later years exposed to
the pains of sharp retrenchment. Transient incomes suggest to every
one who has any degree of reason the need of establishing and
maintaining some future standard of living, and of investing enough to
accomplish this. This is more true, of course, when the rate of
interest is low.

_The Importance of the Need of Enlarging a Business._--There is a
special reason why legitimate business profits are morally certain to
be to a large extent laid aside for investment. The man would say that
he "needs them in his business." They come at a time when there is an
inducement to enlarge the scale of his profitable operations. The man
who is getting a dividend of fifty per cent per annum must make hay
while the sun shines, and he can do it by doubling the capacity of his
mill. What he makes and what he can borrow he uses for an increase of
his output, which it is important to secure during the profitable
time. All this means a quick increase of the total capital in
existence.

The profits