ALTERNATIVES SEEN AS BASIC ECONOMIC FACTS 199 
gressive economic production is just one part of a continuing 
interchange of matter and energy between organism and environ- 
ment in combinations of increasing complexity. The evolution of 
utility I said is a process of correlation and coordination. In 
capitalistic production we have a lengthening series of pre- 
liminary correlations and coordinations. Every intermediate 
product must be a complex of such preliminary correlations and 
codrdinations, and if it is to be in fact einer Hilfskraft it must 
be the precise complex that fits exactly into a combination of 
increasing complexity. The fitting in of exactly the right product 
in exactly the right place is specifically what is involved in the 
“capitalization” of “stock.” It calls for invention in the ordinary 
meaning of the word, and a good deal more. It calls for the 
organizing and adjusting functions of the entrepreneur and of the 
financier. Capitalization, then, as here described, is the creative 
thinking which is imperative if we are to escape from the 
economics of exploitation. 
These considerations bring us to our fourth basic economic fact, 
which is the alternative: Speed up and work overtime or fail to 
capitalize; fail even to have stock to capitalize. 
Many of the complexes of preliminary correlation and coordi- 
nation are provided for us by nature. Primitive man, the tool 
making animal, invented others, the first intermediate products 
of Bohm-Bawerk’s lengthening series. Modern man, the machine 
maker, has added an incredible number, all of marvelous 
complexity. 
How has the accumulation of these intermediate products been 
effected? I confess to amazement that economists should ever 
have taught that the word “saving” conveys an adequate answer. 
To have saving there must be something that can be saved, and 
there must be a motive for saving. Consider, then, the case of a 
man who is so circumstanced that he must toil from sun to sun to 
obtain enough food, fuel and other necessaries to sustain life. 
That man, at least, whatever may be true of another, can get 
something to save only by working over-time or harder. Or 
consider the case of a man content with a low standard of living. 
He does not save. 
But, we are reminded, multitudes of human beings have enjoyed 
the luck of living indolently in bountiful environments, and as 
for the rest of us tools and capitalistic processes have enabled us