_Accumulated energies._—The force accumulated through personal effort in
training, education and discipline is similar to capital in the fact that
it represents a period of time between the effort and its full
accomplishment, and that it is devoted to production of wealth. It differs
from capital in being immaterial human energy, exceedingly useful in
combination with capital, but a part of the laborer, not his tools. It is
gained by devoting time, attention, thought and practice to acquiring
methods of greatest efficiency in any act of labor. It requires surplus
energy in labor at any task to gain, not only the material result, but
power to do the same task better and more easily next time. All the time
expended in acquiring such powers is put into the value of what is finally
produced. Any peculiar tact or ability developed becomes an essential part
of individual powers, and its product, like that of any form of exertion,
becomes the property of the individual.
In this way, not only is the cost of gaining skill or education, or of
establishing habits, returned in the product, but often a considerable
increment, or gain, from the larger demand for such abilities. A skilled
artisan’s labor meets more urgent demands for its use.
_Skill._—If this extra exertion takes the form of training muscles, nerves
and brain to act with speed and accuracy as judgment directs, we call the
attainment _skill_. Even if the action required is simple, dexterity comes
only by practice, and in special cases may multiply the product many
times. Two men may shear sheep with equal accuracy, but one has three
times the speed of the other. His skill secures employment at three times
the wages of the other, with profit to the employer, because the extra
speed saves room, attendance and risk over employing three men at
one-third the rate. The shearer profits by the rarity of his skill in
getting the wages of three men, with the support of but one, and in more
constant employment. When the operation is more complex, and success
involves larger interests, skill counts indefinitely more, and as society
grows complex the room for exercise of skill becomes larger and more
varied. The wide difference between pioneer farming and market-gardening
illustrates this. The history of agriculture shows the slow development of
skill in the furrow, the ditch and hedge, and in the handling and breeding
of stock. Farmers once barely scratched an acre a day with their rude plow
and were long in learning the use of a harrow. No attempt, according to
Professor Rogers, to improve the breeds of cattle and sheep appeared
before the eighteenth century in England. Most early improvements in
farming skill came from the industrious monks, whose intelligence fostered
skill.
The advantage given by skill perpetuates skill from generation to
generation through aptitude and superior training, and so the people of a
neighborhood or a country may inherit such power in contrast with other
regions. “Yankee ingenuity” has become proverbial through such natural
extension.
_Discipline._—Education serves the same purpose by acquisition of
knowledge in such ways as to give wisdom in its application. It involves
an exercise of intelligence to the establishing of sound judgment. Broader
than skill in its range, it increases the possibilities of skill as
storage of power. The skill of the surgeon would never have existed but
for the brightening of his intelligence by education. The electrician’s
training depends upon a broad foundation of education in knowledge of the
matters he handles so dextrously. In farming, this source of stored up
power has until very recently been ignored. While men in many professions
were multiplying their individual power by spending youth in school, the
farm boy would be simply trained at the plow, without the enlargement of
practice in thinking required elsewhere. Such education has become at
length, like skill, a requisite of each generation in order that our
civilization may be maintained. For this the states build and the nation
sustains agricultural colleges.
_Character._—Just as important, though often overlooked in enumerating
economic forces, is the acquired personal habit of self-control. Without
it both skill and education avail but little, and it may do its work
independently of both. “Tried and trusted” expresses our estimate of the
importance of long practice of virtue in meeting obstacles. The formation
of habits—personal, business and moral,—is a matter of time and
discipline. It costs exertion through a series of years; but the power
accumulated may be needed only once, in some great emergency.
The character of the workman, the tradesman and the farmer enters more or
less into the product of his toil and gives it value. Though I may not
care from whence come the shoes I wear, or the butter I eat, I do care for
the genuineness of both, for which I must depend upon the genuine
character of the makers and sellers of both. This, too, is maintained from
generation to generation by its successful use in acquiring both power and
wealth. It cannot be had without the expenditure of time, energy and means
of the fathers and mothers of one age upon their successors.
_Importance of attainments._—All these personal attainments, whether
confined to individuals or extended over whole communities, must be
reckoned among producing powers and reckoned with in estimate of earnings.
A community deficient in either is low in ability to supply its own wants
or the world’s wants, and no amount of material capital can take their
place. They are superior to capital in being less destructible by fire or
flood, and more easily turned to account in new enterprises as needed. No
capital is perpetual, even in most fixed forms, nor is any personal
attainment sure to remain of direct use; but the latter has a larger
expectation of usefulness and greater permanence in the economy of
nations.