Such cases show also another thing.

The most primitive races possess rude implements of some kind, which any pair of hands can fashion, just as any pair of hands can use them.

These rude implements are capital in its embryonic form; and so far as they go, they verify the Marxian theory that capital is nothing but past labour crystallised.
But we need not, in order to see labour, past and present, operating and producing in a practically unalloyed condition, go to savage or even semi-civilised countries.

The same thing may be seen among groups of peasant proprietors, which still survive here and there in the remoter parts of Europe.

These men and their families, by their own unaided labour, produce nearly everything which they eat and wear and use.