It was there pointed out that the machinery of the modern world owes its existence to the fact that men of exceptional talent, by possessing the control of goods which a number of other men require, are able in return for the goods to make these other men exert themselves in a variety of minutely prescribed and elaborately co-ordinated ways.

In short, all spending is, on the part of those who spend, a determination of the efforts of others in such ways as the spender pleases.

Further, as was pointed out in an earlier chapter also, the only goods thus generally exchangeable for effort are those common necessaries of existence for which most men must always work, and which may here be represented by food, the first and the most important of them.

Hence, whenever the question arises of how any given capital shall be treated--of whether it shall be invested or else spent as income--this capital must be regarded as existing in the indeterminate form of food, which is equally capable of being treated in one way or the other.

And any man's capital represents for him, according to its amount, the power of feeding, and so determining the actions of a definite number of other men for some definite period.