Thus, in Great Britain, towards the close of the nineteenth century, these makers and repairers of machinery were, with the exception of coal-miners, the industrial body whose proportional increase was greatest.

In the modern world the spending of capital as income is a process which, in proportion as it became general, would accomplish itself by affecting the position of men like these.

It would consist of a withdrawal of men who are at present occupied in maintaining existing machines, or else in constructing new ones from their anvils, hammers, files, lathes, and furnaces, and making them dance instead.

This withdrawal would, in proportion as it became general, render the construction of new machines impossible, and would leave the efficiency of those now in use to exhaust itself.
That such is the case is illustrated on a small scale by the conduct of individuals who live on their capital now.

If a farmer, whose capital consists largely of an agricultural plant, desires to spend more than his proceeds of his farm are worth, he virtually takes the men who have been mending his barns and reapers, and sets them to build a buggy which will take him to the neighbouring races.