CHAPTER 1V 
CAPITAL 
§ 1 
In the foregoing introduction we have set forth several 
fundamental concepts of economic science, — wealth, 
property, services, satisfactions, utility, price, and value. 
We have seen that wealth consists of material appropriated 
objects, and property, of rights in these objects; that wealth 
in its broadest sense includes human beings, and property 
in its broadest sense includes all rights whatsoever; that 
services are the benefits of wealth, satisfactions the enjoy- 
ment of services, and desirability or utility the desire for 
wealth, property, services, or satisfactions: that prices are 
the ratios of exchange between quantities of wealth, prop- 
erty, or services; and, finally, that value is the price of any 
of these multiplied by the quantity. These concepts are 
the chief tools needed in economic study. 
Nothing has yet been said as to the relation of these 
various magnitudes to that great “Independent variable” 
of human experience, time. When we speak of a certain 
quantity of wealth we may have reference either to a quan- 
tity existing at a particular instant of time, or to a quan- 
tity produced, consumed, exchanged, or transported during 
a period of time. The first quantity is a stock (or fund) 
of wealth; the second quantity is a flow (or stream) of 
wealth. The contents of a granary at noon, January 1, 
1906, is a stock of wheat; the amount of wheat which has 
been hoisted into it during a week, or the amount of wheat 
which has been exported from the port of New York during 
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