Contractual interest and rent involve a difference of business procedure
4. Renting wealth and borrowing capital have the same economic purpose, but the capital contract presents certain peculiar features. In the interest contract for the loan of capital the interest always is and must be expressed in money; the capital sum must be expressed as value; and the interest rate expresses the relation between these two values. In each of these features the interest contract is in contrast with the renting contract. While the rent itself may or may not be expressed in terms of money, the value of the rented wealth is not so expressed, and there is no rent-rate expressing the relation between the two values.
The wealth concept and the capital concept contrasted
As here presented, the essence of the capital concept is in the mode or form of expression of wealth, not in the physical nature, the origin of its value, or any peculiarity in the kind of wealth; the content of the concept is limited only by man's thought of wealth, every good becoming capital when it is capitalized, that is, when the totality of its uses is expressed as a present sum of values. The difference between the wealth concept and the capital concept is therefore subjective, not objective; it is a difference in the mode of man's thought regarding wealth. The rent contract and the interest contract are modes of borrowing and lending which reflect this difference of conception. In their effort to express more exactly to themselves and to others the relative felt importance of their environment, men take in turn different points of view, and use different modes of expression. The most developed and exact of these devices for the social expression of valuations, which became possible only with a money economy and widened markets, is the capital concept, whose nature has been analyzed here.
The capital concept now prevalent
Summarizing the thought of this chapter, it may be said that the capital concept has gradually developed with industry, and is now the most widely prevailing mode of expressing the quantity of wealth. It is used in the discussion of all the most important problems of modern industry. The questions of income from wealth, of trusts and corporations, nearly all that is most notable in the development of modern industry, require the use of the capital concept. Yet (returning to the thought with which this chapter started) in many of the outlying districts other modes of looking upon wealth are employed. References to modern industry must be understood usually as applying to the most developed capitalistic conditions.
CHAPTER 15
THE CAPITALIZATION OF ALL FORMS OF RENT
§ I. THE PURCHASE OF RENT-CHARGES AS AN EXAMPLE OF CAPITALIZATION
The nature and sale of rent-charges
1. From the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries the sale and purchase of rent-charges was the most general form of borrowing and lending wealth. A rent-charge in the Middle Ages was a definite income that was to be paid out of the rents of an estate, business house, manor, etc. The property was said to be "charged" with the payment of that income, and some estates were passed on for generations from father to son charged with a certain rent. It was thus possible for the owner of money to buy a rent-charge, either one that had been created a generation before, or a new one created by some landowner for the especial purpose of borrowing money to go on a crusade or of improving his estate or of investing in other business. The transaction took this form: the purchaser of the rent-charge paid a sum of money, called the capital sum, and obtained in return a rent-paper entitling him to receive permanently a given income. The house or land was security for the debt. The seller gave up the right to the rent as it came in year by year, and received in return a capital sum in hand. Generally he had the right to repay the sum whenever he wished and thus extinguish the rent-charge. Logically viewed, the purchaser bought an equitable part of the income, therefore an equitable part of that rent-bearing wealth. In effect it was just like a loan except that the purchaser of the rent-charge could not demand the repayment of his money. He could, however, sell the rent-charge when he wished to get his capital out. Gradually it became usual to sell and transfer rent-papers just as is done to-day with mortgages and bonds. Rent-papers thus came in the fifteenth century to be negotiable paper in somewhat general use. There was a rise and fall of the value of the rent-paper with changes in the demand for investment in rent-charges or with changes in the security.
Rent-charges were a convenient investment in medieval cities
2. The sale of rent-charges grew out of an industrial need of the exchange of safe permanent incomes for larger sums of wealth. The custom of the purchase of rent-charges grew up in the cities. The increasing wealth of cities, the growth of commerce and enterprise, caused rent-charges to be sold by the owners of houses and real estate in the cities, and the custom spread to the country. It is an instance of the way income became more fluid in the cities during the Middle Ages. This kind of loan contrasted strikingly in the Middle Ages with those loans made commonly by reckless kings, prodigal nobles, and distressed peasants to secure consumption goods. Merchants needed large amounts of wealth for their growing enterprises, and they felt that if they could get a capital sum down they could make it earn more than the rent-charge. A perpetual income of one hundred units was therefore exchanged for a sum at the moment of twenty or twenty-five times that amount. As the wealth of the cities increased, there were some men who wished to retire from active business, and there were widows and children with property which they could not manage directly. Such persons either could not afford to take the risks of active business, or could not judge of them, and they formed a class of lenders or investors seeking some safe income. Between the two classes of active merchants and capitalist lenders, each of whom saw his own advantage and followed it, the practice of buying and selling rent-charges thus grew up.
Rent-charges were not forbidden by the church
The practice was allowed by the church, though interest and the lending of money were forbidden. The loan was substantially a loan of capital and the rent-charge was substantially interest, but in the eyes of the church moralists there was a marked difference, in that the obligation to the purchaser of the rent-charge was secured by a permanent and substantial form of wealth, and the contract usually was favorable to the borrowers. In its origin the practice was not merely an evasion of the law against usury, but a convenient form of contract. It doubtless came, however, to be used as a means of evading the law of the church against usury, and thus became an entering wedge for the general use of money loans.
The market value of rent-charges reflects the exchange ratio between present and future money incomes
3. Rent-charges had a market-value, varying with time and place, and expressed as a number of years' purchase of the rent-charge. The sellers of rent-charges were influenced by many motives: a lord wished to build a castle, or go on a crusade; a farmer wished to improve his estate; a merchant wished to embark on larger ventures. Opportunities thus opened in the cities for men of wealth to get a fixed income for a payment of ready money. In the cities, the buyers seeking a fixed income would bid down, or bid up, the value of the rent-charges, which thus came to have a quotable market value. In time, greater and greater amounts were paid by the investors in return for the guarantee of a given income. In rural districts the value of the charges was low, that is, the capital sum was but ten or twelve times the value of the annual rent-charge; while in the cities it rose to twenty and even twenty-five times the annual rent-charge.
A memento of this practice, probably, is the manner in which the price paid for land