INCOME AND CAPITAL

it. Thus, in any complete bookkeeping, $100 worth ofplowing, on the one hand, is credited jointly to the plow,the plowman, and the team, or motor, which do the plow-ing; that is, which yield or bestow the service. On theother hand, it is debited to the land which is plowed,that is, which receives the service.

If the plow is owned by one person and the land byanother, the latter paying $100 to the former, then theservice of plowing, though a self-cancelling interactionfor the two persons taken together, evidently cannot beignored by either separately. If $100 is paid for this serv-ice of plowing, the $100 item is an expense to the land-owner to be subtracted from his gross income. It is noconcern of his that this self-same service of plowing iscounted as income by the plow-owner. So this item of$100 worth of plowing affects our accounts quite differ-ently according to the point of view. It may be a plusitem from the point of view of one person and a minusitem from that of another. When, however, the two ac-counts are combined and the plus and minus items areadded, their algebraic sum is zero. For society as a whole,therefore, no positive income results from plowing untilthe land has yielded its crop and the crop has been finallyconsumed.

Thus, simply by the mechanical, clerical processes ofmaking bookkeepers’ entries, we reach again, in the op-posite order, the various stages originally described inthe opening pages of this chapter. That is, the sum totalof income flowing from a group of capital sources isnaturally different according to which capital sources areincluded. There are certain cancellations within anygroup of capital goods which have an uncancelled fringe,and this may itself in turn disappear by cancellation if

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