INTRODUCTORY

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receives a price for the hire, which we regard as the income
derived from ownership. In the latter case the yacht is
trade capital yielding an income in money ; in the former
case the yacht is performing similar services, but its owner
is the recipient of an income of direct utilities, and the yacht
would be classed as consumption capital. Narrower definitions
 of capital have been used, which would exclude all
capital which is not trade capital, but to refuse to recognise
as capital things precisely similar in form and nature, and
similarly related to all concerned in enabling the utilities to
be procured by their use, introduces a too artificial line of
division. Some capital renders its income of services to its
owner ; other capital, rendering a like income of services,
renders them to others than the owner, and the owner derives
an income in money or its equivalent by affording to others
the opportunity of procuring that direct income of services.
In the light of this conception of capital, the controversies
as to the changes in the amount of capital which result from
changes of intention on the part of an owner of commodities,
the decision to turn them to the use of himself or family
alternating with the intention to use them for business
purposes, may be dismissed. There is no difficulty in
conceiving of variations in the proportion of the total
capital of any community which is devoted to trade, variations
 due to the whim or fancy of owners of portions of
the capital, though it was not a proposition readily acceptable
 that the amount of capital in existence could so change
from moment to moment, now increasing, now decreasing,
while no change occurred in the actual commodities
existing,
Some goods, by their nature, will generally form part of
trade capital, others form trade capital or consumption
capital according to circumstances. Thus a piano, or even
the whole furniture, including ornaments, pictures, etc., of
a house, may be hired as a business transaction, and the firms
which keep such goods for hire hold them as trade capital.
For a majority of people, however, household effects are
owned by their users, and it is not Customary to think of
them as capital. Yet they form as real a part of the equip-