_Capital conservative._--Capital, especially in fixed forms, being in its nature the conserving of energy, is necessarily an incentive to conservatism in society, since any great and sudden changes in the habits of a community involve rapid consumption or destruction of capital. Capital is said to be "timid." This statement means simply that all owners and users of capital who realize the time required for accumulating it hesitate to risk its destruction in doubtful enterprises, uncertain confidence or venturesome experiments in government or financiering. War, riots, or even revenue laws, may destroy fixed capital that has been the growth of a century. A small change in tariff laws has rendered useless immense factories. For the same reason farmers, having so large a fixed capital in farms and farm machinery, do not take kindly to political changes involving doubtful consequences. States where the capital is still circulating may readily venture upon experiments financial or political, since little time is lost even in destructive results. People in new countries take risks readily because they have less to risk.
_Accumulated energies._--The force accumulated through personal effort in training, education and discipline is similar to capital in the fact that it represents a period of time between the effort and its full accomplishment, and that it is devoted to production of wealth. It differs from capital in being immaterial human energy, exceedingly useful in combination with capital, but a part of the laborer, not his tools. It is gained by devoting time, attention, thought and practice to acquiring methods of greatest efficiency in any act of labor. It requires surplus energy in labor at any task to gain, not only the material result, but power to do the same task better and more easily next time. All the time expended in acquiring such powers is put into the value of what is finally produced. Any peculiar tact or ability developed becomes an essential part of individual powers, and its product, like that of any form of exertion, becomes the property of the individual.
In this way, not only is the cost of gaining skill or education, or of establishing habits, returned in the product, but often a considerable increment, or gain, from the larger demand for such abilities. A skilled artisan's labor meets more urgent demands for its use.