Our capitalist, who is at home in his vulgar economy, exclaims:
 “Oh! but I advanced my money for the express purpose of making more
 money.” The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might
 just as easily have intended to make money, without producing at all. [14]
 He threatens all sorts of things. He won’t be caught napping again. In
 future he will buy the commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing
 them himself. But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where
 would he find his commodities in the market? And his money he cannot eat.
 He tries persuasion. “Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks
 and drakes with the 15 shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively,
 and made yarn with it.” Very well, and by way of reward he is now in
 possession of good yarn instead of a bad conscience; and as for playing
 the part of a miser, it would never do for him to relapse into such bad
 ways as that; we have seen before to what results such asceticism leads.
 Besides, where nothing is, the king has lost his rights; whatever may be
 the merit of his abstinence, there is nothing wherewith specially to remunerate
 it, because the value of the product is merely the sum of the values of
 the commodities that were thrown into the process of production. Let him
 therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward.
 But no, he becomes importunate. He says: “The yarn is of no use to me:
 I produced it for sale.” 
 In that case let him sell it, or, still better,
 let him for 187the future produce only things for satisfying his
 personal wants, a remedy that his physician MacCulloch has already prescribed
 as infallible against an epidemic of over-production. He now gets obstinate.
 “Can the labourer,” he asks, “merely with his arms and legs, produce
 commodities out of nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by
 means of which, and in which alone, his labour could be embodied? And as
 the greater part of society consists of such ne’er-do-wells, have I not
 rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production,
 my cotton and my spindle, and not only society, but the labourer also,
 whom in addition I have provided with the necessaries of life? And am I
 to be allowed nothing in return for all this service?” Well, but has
 not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his cotton
 and spindle into yarn? Moreover, there is here no question of service.
 [15] A service is nothing more than the useful effect
 of a use-value, be it of a commodity, or be it of labour. [16]
 But here we are dealing with exchange-value. The capitalist paid to the
 labourer a value of 3 shillings, and the labourer gave him back an exact
 equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by him to the cotton: he
 gave him value for value. Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly
 assumes the modest demeanour of his own workman, and exclaims: “Have
 I myself not worked? Have I not performed the labour of superintendence
 and of overlooking the spinner? And does not this labour, too, create value?”
 His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles. Meanwhile, after
 a hearty laugh, he re-assumes his usual mien. Though he chanted to us the
 whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he would not give a
 brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and
 juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for
 it. He himself is a practical man; and though he does not always consider
 what he says outside his business, yet in his business he knows what he
 is about.