THE THEORY OF INTEREST

the group is enlarged by including other capital itemswith interactions between the new and old members.Henry Ford’s mines yield a net income, the differencebetween certain credits and debits. If we include therailway which transports the product to the factory,certain credits to the mines from turning their productover to the railroad now disappear, being debits to therailway. If the circle be still further enlarged, say to in-clude the Ford factories, other items likewise disappearas parts of interactions within the enlarged circle, and soon.

We must, of course, include all services as income. Adwelling renders income to the owner who dwells in ithimself just as truly as when he lets it to another. Inthe first case, his income is shelter; in the second, his in-come is rent payments in money. All wealth existing atany moment is capital and yields income in some form.As a business man said to me, his pleasure yacht is capi-tal and gives him dividends every Saturday afternoon.

§13. Simplicity Underlying Complications

In our present-day complicated economic life we arelikely to be confused by the many industrial operationsand money transactions. But net income still remainsexactly what it was to primitive Robinson Crusoeon his island—the enjoyment from eating the berries wepick, so to speak, less the discomfort or the labor of pick-ing them. The only difference is that today the pickingis not so entirely hand-to-mouth, but is done by means ofcomplicated apparatus and after the frequent exchange ofmoney; that is, a long chain of middlemen, capital, andmoney transactions intervenes between the labor of pick-ing at the start and the satisfaction of eating at the end.

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