ole} ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

increase rather than decrease owing to a 7e/ative decrease in
its supply. It may also be noted that increase of knowledge
may enable a simpler harness for nature’s powers to be
devised ; a smaller capital may give greater results than were
given by a larger one before the increase of knowledge; a
less roundabout process may be substituted for one more
roundabout. Such a reversal of the general rule is, however,
no ground for denying the general validity of the assertion
that more roundabout processes are more efficient, more
productive, than those which are less roundabout.
What has been above said, as to the source of productiveness
 of capital, may be otherwise expressed by saying that
improvements in the organisation of production, which are
rendered possible by the aid of capital, have the result of
rendering that production more efficient. When immediate
needs do not require the use of all the goods in hand for
their satisfaction, modes of organisation, which are more
effective than those whose products are immediate, may be
adopted. When ownership, or at least control, of capital
has been secured, the efforts of to-day practically yield
results to-day. A constant labour of production goes on,
and a steady stream of products is evolved, which, in effect,
affords payment for all the productive effort currently
rendered, and leaves a surplus. As already stated, the
owners of this stream of new goods have the choice as to
whether they shall be consumed for purposes of immediate,
perhaps transient, enjoyment, or as to how much shall be
devoted to provide more perfect appliances for production.
The forms, which the goods being currently completed take,
depend on the knowledge, as to what that choice will be,
possessed by those who direct the production, a knowledge
based on experience, since men’s desires, taken in the
aggregate, do not undergo rapid and violent change.
It should be observed that the market for capital is not
one single market, but is made up of several markets, in all
of which the same commodity, the control of purchasing
power, is bought and sold. The conditions of the market
for capital to be devoted to long-period investment are
somewhat different from those of the market for capital to