Sec. 2] GENERAL SUMMARY 325
property signifying merely the sharing of wealth among
individuals. When we piece together these shares, we obtain
the ownership of all wealth. In like manner, the value
of the entire mass of wealth must be taken to mean simply
the sum of the values of the individual shares of this ownership.
When we attempt to reach this total by combining
the shares of individuals, we do so by making a careful
record of all “capital accounts.” In such a record we find
that many items occur in pairs, — negative items of
property or “liabilities” in one account and positive items
or “assets” in another. By this pairing of items, there
will be left as the final sum of property value the
value of the entire stock of physical instruments.
Of the services which flow from the stock of capital,
it has been seen that the great majority consist merely
of “interactions” between one category of capital and
another. All that is accomplished by most instruments
of capital is to hand over something to other instruments of
capital. The great mass of capital —lands, warehouses, railroads,
machinery, ships, ete. — exists either for ‘‘transportation,”
that is, for changing the position of wealth from
one place to another ; or for “production,” that is, for changing
wealth from one state or form to another; or finally
for exchange, the mutual transfer of rights to wealth. In
every such operation, the instruments which have wrought
the change are said to have rendered a service; and in the
income account these instruments are credited with the
value of such services; while the instruments which receive
the services, and are thus improved in position or condition,
are said to have rendered a disservice and are at
the same time debited with exactly the same item. When
we thus come to put together the entire total of income,
all such pairs of items or “interactions” cancel. These
double-faced events or interactions constitute the overwhelming
mass of items in the actual inventory of income
which enter into the accounts of business men. Out of
