A Quote by William Cowper Brann

It is time that capital and labor realized that their interests are really comutual, as interdependent as the brain and the body; time they ceased their fratricidal strife and, uniting their mighty forces under the flag of Progress, completed the conquest of the world and doomed Poverty, Ignorance and Vice... Unless labor is employed, capital cannot increase - it cannot concentrate. Unless property rights are held inviolable and capital thereby encouraged to high enterprise, labor is left without a lever with which to lift itself to perfect life and must sink back to barbarism.

William Cowper Brann

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Back Barbarism Body Brain Cannot Capital Completed Concentrate Conquest Doomed Employed Encouraged Enterprise Flag Forces Held High Ignorance Increase Interdependent Interests Itself Labor Left Lever Life Lift Mighty Must Perfect Perfect Life Poverty Progress Property Property Rights Realized Really Rights Sink Strife Thereby Time Uniting Unless Vice Which Without World

Quote Author

William Cowper Brann
American - Journalist
January 4, 1855 - April 1, 1898

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Abraham Lincoln

Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.

Henry George

Each needs the other: capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital.

Pope Leo I

Labor is superior to capital and precedes capital. Without labor, there is no capital.

Abraham Lincoln

We are coming to see that there should be no stifling of labor by capital, or of capital by labor; and also that there should be no stifling of labor by labor, or of capital by capital.

John D. Rockefeller

Thus, the capital owner is not a parasite or a rentier but a worker - a capital worker. A distinction between labor work and capital work suggests the lines along which we could develop economic institutions capable of dealing with increasingly capital-intensive production, as our present institutions cannot.

Louis O. Kelso

Labor should be recognized as entitled to consult with management in the mutual interest. Labor cannot be driven, and business cannot be successful unless the men employed in it are enthusiastic and loyal. That loyalty cannot be obtained with a big stick; it must be based upon fair dealing and sympathy.

Charles M. Schwab

Labor in this country is independent and proud. It has not to ask the patronage of capital, but capital solicits the aid of labor.

Daniel Webster

If you go out into the real world, you cannot miss seeing that the poor are poor not because they are untrained or illiterate but because they cannot retain the returns of their labor. They have no control over capital, and it is the ability to control capital that gives people the power to rise out of poverty.

Muhammad Yunus

From my earliest acquaintance with the science of political economy, it has been evident to my mind that capital was the product of labor, and that therefore, in its best analysis there could be no natural conflict between capital and labor.

Leland Stanford

A demand for commodities is not a demand for labor. The demand for labor is determined by the amount of capital directly devoted to the remuneration of labor: the demand for commodities simply determines in what direction labor shall be employed.

Millicent Fawcett

If you divorce capital from labor, capital is hoarded, and labor starves.

Daniel Webster

In a capitalist world, the word capital has taken on more and more uses. . . . human capital, for instance, which is what labor accumulates through education and work experience. Human capital differs from the classic kind in that you can't inherit it, and it can only be rented, not bought or sold.

Kim Stanley

Digitally enabled supply chains initially increased efficiency and dramatically shortened lead times. Capital was mobile; labor, less so. Economic activity (production, research, design, etc.) moved to any accessible country or region that had relatively inexpensive labor and human capital.

Michael Spence

In antiquity, agriculture and industry depended completely on human labor; but now, with the development of natural forces that human labor cannot match, agriculture and industry have fallen completely into the hands of the capitalists. The greater the amount of capital, the more abundant the resources that can be utilized.