INCOME AND CAPITAL

To continue the literal example of berry picking, we findtoday huckleberries picked by hired laborers on the Po-cono Mountains, sorted, graded, shipped by rail and motorto New York City wholesalers, resold to retailers who selland deliver them to the housewife in whose kitchen theyare again sorted and prepared for their ultimate missionof giving enjoyment. The individual’s total income whenelaborately worked out, after cancelling, in pairs orcouples, all such credits and debits, whether of moneypayments or the money value of services—in productionor exchange—coincides necessarily with his enjoymentincome, less the labor pain suffered in the same period,from which sort of income we started our discussion inthis chapter. This coincidence occurs necessarily andautomatically, by virtue of these mathematical cancel-lations.

It is interesting to observe that a corporation as suchcan have no net income. Since a corporation is a fictitious,not a real, person, each of its items without exception isdoubly entered. Its stockholders may get income fromit, but the corporation itself, considered as a separateperson apart from these stockholders, receives none.

The total income of a real person is his enjoymentincome only provided we include the credits and debits ofhis own body. The physical music, or vibrations whichpass from his piano to his ear are, strictly speaking, onlyinteractions to be credited to his piano and debited to hisbodily ear. The music in his consciousness comes at theother, or brain, end of the auditory nerve. The piano playsto his ear, his ear to his brain, and his brain to his con-sciousness. His whole body mechanism is a transmitterfrom the outer world to his inner life, through ear, eye,and its other sense organs.

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