Bring tools and raw material together; place a plough and some seed on fertile soil; enter a smithy, light the fire, and shut up the shop,--you will produce nothing.

The following remark was made by an economist who possessed more good sense than most of his fellows: "Say credits capital with an active part unwarranted by its nature; left to itself, it is an idle tool." (J.Droz: Political Economy.) Finally, labor and capital together, when unfortunately combined, produce nothing.

Plough a sandy desert, beat the water of the rivers, pass type through a sieve,--you will get neither wheat, nor fish, nor books.

Your trouble will be as fruitless as was the immense labor of the army of Xerxes; who, as Herodotus says, with his three million soldiers, scourged the Hellespont for twenty-four hours, as a punishment for having broken and scattered the pontoon bridge which the great king had thrown across it.
Tools and capital, land and labor, considered individually and abstractly, are not, literally speaking, productive.

The proprietor who asks to be rewarded for the use of a tool, or the productive power of his land, takes for granted, then, that which is radically false; namely, that capital produces by its own effort,--and, in taking pay for this imaginary product, he literally receives something for nothing.
OBJECTION .-- But if the blacksmith, the wheelwright, all manufacturers in short, have a right to the products in return for the implements which they furnish; and if land is an implement of production,--why does not this implement entitle its proprietor, be his claim real or imaginary, to a portion of the products; as in the case of the manufacturers of ploughs and wagons?
REPLY .-- Here we touch the heart of the question, the mystery of property; which we must clear up, if we would understand any thing of the strange effects of the right of increase.
He who manufactures or repairs the farmer's tools receives the price ONCE, either at the time of delivery, or in several payments; and when this price is once paid to the manufacturer, the tools which he has delivered belong to him no more.