the plough may be considered as applied at several positions (a'1a1, a2a'2,... a5a'5) in several
contributions, respectively proportioned to the breadth of the stream at these points. If labour is
invested in the production of a machine, imagined by economists, which lasts for ever,86 or, what
comes to the same, an improvement, such as the draining of land or opening a mine, or cutting an
isthmus, which is calculated to yield a constant income for an Indefinitely long series of years, then
the series of positions along the stream at which the labour is supposed to be invested must be
carried back indefinitely (see the channel of which the mouth is b1b’1) up to that needle-point whose
tapering dimensions correspond to the perspective of an indefinitely distant future.
Eternal machines are not very common; but the conception may serve to illustrate a species
of tool or implement of which the race remains immortal, though the individual is worn out and
perishes. Of this kind are implements which are directed not only to produce goods immediately
ready for consumption or implements of a kind different from their own, but also to reproduce their
own kind. Hammers and axes are presumably of this kind in a primitive society; in an advanced state
of industry, some more complicated engines.87 Such machines may be compared to horses, if used
not only as beasts of burden, but also as stallions. The demand for such creatures is presumably
influenced by the expected series of future generations, so fat as commercial prospectiveness may
extend. In the stationary state of steady motion, here provisionally contemplated, reproductive
machines would be illustrated by beasts of burden of which the breed does not sensibly improve in
successive generations.
Two channels only have been represented in the diagram, one of finite, the other of infinite
length, with breadth exaggerated for the sake of clearness. Properly, there should be as many
channels as there are categories of articles ready for immediate consumption,—“goods of the first
order,” as the Austrians say; and the breadth should be such as to allow of the corresponding number
of sectors being fitted into the circle. Another circumstance which must be left to the imagination
is the introduction of one and the same article into several streams of production at different
distances from the final stage. Coal, for instance, so far as it is used for warming dwelling-houses,
is a good of the first order; so far as it is used to drive machines,—themselves perhaps used only to
produce other machines,—coal is to be placed among the higher orders.
The distinction which has been drawn between work which is applied in the neighbourhood
of and at a distance from the final stage of production is not coincident with the distinction between
the saving and the non-saving classes. The shower of commodities apportioned to each spot
according to its height above the littoral as well as to the volume of value which there took its rise,
is not “like the gentle rain from heaven.” It does not drop impartially on all who have been
concerned with the work of eliciting the stream. Those who have done the common labour of
pumping—the drawers of water—fare no better than if that work had been done at the littoral. In
fact, it is proper to conceive that it was done at the littoral. As the energy generated at the Falls of
Niagara is transmitted for use to a point higher up on the river, so on the stream of production the
work of pumping is mostly done at the littoral, though it is applied at the heights. For instance, on
the first stream an amount of work proportioned to a5a'5 might be done at the littoral, and be paid for
in commodities at the rate current on the littoral; that is, without the augmentation of value which
86. Mill, Political Economy, Book I, chap. vi §2.
87. Or rather a certain system of machinery. Cp. Marx on machines produced by machinery. Capital,
ch. xv.