CHAPTER V

CAPITAL ACCOUNTS

§1

WE have defined capital as a quantity of wealth existing
at an instant of time. A full view of capital would be
afforded by an instantaneous photograph of wealth. This
would reveal, in addition to the durable wealth, a large
amount of goods of rapid consumption. It would disclose,
not the annual procession of such goods, but the members
of that procession that had not yet been transmuted in
form or passed off the stage of existence, however swiftly
they might be moving across it. It would show trainloads
 of meat, eggs, and milk in transit, cargoes of fish,
spices, and sugar, as well as the contents of private pantries,
ice chests, and wine cellars. Even the supplies on the table
of a man bolting his dinner would find a place. So the
clothes in one’s wardrobe or on one’s back, the tobacco in
a smoker’s pouch or pipe, the oil in the can or lamp,
would all be elements in this flash-light picture of capital.
Such a collection of wealth is, however, heterogeneous;
it cannot be expressed in a single sum. We can inventory
the separate items, but we cannot add them together.
They may, however, be reduced to a homogeneous mass by
considering, not their kinds and quantities, but their
values. And this value of any stock of wealth is also called
“capital.” To distinguish these two senses of capital, we
call a stock, store, or accumulation of existing instruments
of wealth, each instrument being measured in its own unit,
capital-instruments, or capital-wealth, and we call the
value of this stock, when all articles are measured in a com-66