CHAPTER VII.

OF WEALTH.

21. In what does wealth consist? Commodities, or things, not wealth to those who have not the knowledge how to use them. First steps towards the acquisition of wealth always the most costly and the least productive. Definition of wealth.

22. Combination of action essential to the growth of wealth. The less the machinery of exchange required, the greater the power of accumulation. Wealth grows with the decline in the value of commodities, or things, required for man's uses and purposes. 23. Of positive and relative wealth. Man's progress in the ratio of the decline in the value of commodities, and the growth in his own.

4. Material character of the modern political economy. Holds that no values are to be regarded as wealth, but those which take a material form. All employments regarded as unproductive, that do not result in the production of commodities, or things. 25. Definition of wealth now given, in full accordance with its general signification of happiness, prosperity, and power. Grows with the growth of the power of man to associate with his fellow-man.

§ 1. WHEN Crusoe had made a bow he had acquired wealth. In what did it consist? In the power he had thus obtained for substituting the elasticity of the wood and the tenacity of the cord for the muscular effort by means of which alone he had hitherto secured supplies of food. Having made a canoe, his wealth was again increased, because he could command the gratuitous services of water; and having erected a pole in his canoe, and placed on it a skin by way of a sail, he could command the service of the wind with still further augmentation of his wealth.

Suppose, however, that instead of making a bow or a canoe, he had found one, but without the knowledge how to use it, would his wealth have been increased? Certainly not. Wealth does not consist in the mere possession of the instrument, unconnected with the skill required for its direction. The mills and furnaces of the Union would not add to the wealth of the savages of the Rocky Mountains; nor would all our books do so to the man who could not read.

The people of England were for a thousand years in possession of boundless supplies of that fuel a bushel of which can raise 200,000 pounds a foot in a minute, thus doing the work of hundreds of men; yet, in the absence of the knowledge how to utilize its powers, it was not wealth. So, too, with the anthracite coal of Pennsylvania. That fuel was capable of doing a greater amount of work than any other; but for that very reason, greater knowledge was needed for the development of its latent powers. The greater

the amount of utility latent in any commodity, the greater is always the resistance to be overcome subjecting it to the

control of man.

The earth is a great machine given to man to be fashioned to his purposes. The more he fashions it the better it maintains him, because each step is but preparatory to a new and more productive one, requiring less effort and yielding larger return thereto. The labor of clearing is great, yet the return is small, the earth being-covered with stumps, and filled with roots. Each year, as the latter decay, the soil becomes enriched, while the labor of ploughing is much diminished. The owner has done nothing but crop the ground, nature having done the rest; and the aid thus granted him now yields far more food than had been at first obtained in return to all the labor given to clearing the land. The surplus, too, has furnished manure with which to enrich the poorer lands; giving him a daily increasing power over the various treasures of the earth.

In every operation by means of which man subjects the earth to his control, the first step is invariably the most costly, and the least productive. The drain beginning near the stream where the labor is heaviest, frees from water but little land. Further distant, the same quantity of labor, profiting by what has been already done, frees thrice the extent; and now the most perfect system of drainage may be established with less labor than had been at first required for one of the most imperfect kind. To bring lime into connection with the clay on fifty acres, is less laborious than the clearing of a single one had been; yet the process doubles the return. The man who needs a little fuel, spends much labor in opening a vein of coal. The enlargement of this, by which he is enabled to use a wagon, requires comparatively little effort, but it gives him a return that is vastly greater. The first railroad runs by towns occupied by a few hundred thousand persons. Little branches, costing far less labor, bring into connection with it thrice the population.

All labor given to fashioning the great machine is thus but the prelude to its further application with increased returns. The man who cultivated the thin soils was happy to obtain a hundred bushels as compensation for his year's work; but with the descent of himself and his neighbors towards the more fertile soils, wages have risen, and two hundred bushels may be now expected. His farm will yield a thousand bushels; but it requires the labor of four men

who must have two hundred each, and the surplus is no more. At twenty years' purchase, this surplus gives a capital of four thousand bushels, or the equivalent of twenty years' wages; whereas, it may have cost, in the labor of himself, his sons, and assistants, the equivalent of a hundred years of labor. It has, however, fed and clothed them while they worked; and has been brought to its present value by insensible contributions made from year to year.

It is now worth four thousand bushels, because its owner has for years taken from it a thousand bushels annually; but when it had lain for centuries accumulating fertility, it was scarcely worth acceptance. Such is the case with the earth everywhere. When the coal mines of England were untouched, they had no money value. It is now almost countless; yet the land contains supplies for thousands of years. Iron ore lands, a century since, being in low esteem, leases upon it were granted at almost nominal rents. Now, although great quantities have been removed, such leases are deemed equivalent to the possession of the largest fortunes.

The rich lands above described, the coal, the lime, and the cre, always possessed the power to be useful to man; yet they were not wealth, because he had not the knowledge needed for compelling them to labor in his service. Their utility was latent, waiting the action of the human mind for its development.

WEALTH consists in the power to command the ever gratuitous services of nature. The greater the power of association, the more diversified are the demands upon the human intellect; and the greater, as we have seen, must be the development of the peculiar faculties of each member of the society; and the greater the capacity for association. With the latter comes increase of man's power over nature and over himself; and the more perfect his capacity for selfgovernment, the more rapid must be the societary motion, the greater the tendency toward further progress, and the more rapid the growth of wealth.

§ 2. In the early periods of society, when men cultivate the poor soils, there can be little association or combination of action. Population increasing, roads are made and richer soils cultivated. The store and the mill coming nearer, the settler, having no longer to carry his products many miles in search of shoes or flour, has more leisure for the preparation of his machine, and the returns to labor are increased

More people now obtaining food from the same surface, new places of exchange appear. The wool being converted into cloth on the spot, he exchanges directly with the clothier. The saw-mill being at hand, he exchanges with the miller. The tanner gives him leather for his hides, and the papermaker exchanges paper for his rags. His power to command the machinery of exchange is constantly augmenting; whereas, his necessity for its use is constantly decreasing, there being, with each successive year, a greater tendency towards having the consumer and the producer take their places by each other's side.

The loss from the use of the machinery of exchange is in the ratio of the bulk of the article to be exchanged. Food stands first; fuel next; building-stone, third; iron, fourth; cotton, fifth; and so on,-diminishing until we come to laces and nutmegs. The raw material being that in the formation of which the earth has most co-operated, the nearer the place of exchange can be brought to that of production, the less must be the loss in the process; according to the well-known law of physical science, that whatever diminishes the quantity of machinery required, diminishes friction and increases power.

The man who raises food on his own land, is building up a machine for giving larger supplies in the future. His neighbor, to whom it may be given, on condition of sitting still, loses a year's work on his machine, and has only gained the pleasure of idling away his time. If he has employed himself and his horses for as much time as would have been required for raising it, he has wasted labor and manure. As nobody, however, gives, it is obvious that the man who has a farm, and obtains his food elsewhere, must pay both for raising and transporting it; and though he may have obtained as good wages in some other pursuit, his farm, instead of being improved by a year's cultivation, is deteriorated by a year's neglect; and he is a poorer man than if he had raised his own supplies of food.

The article of next greatest bulk is fuel. While warming his house, he is clearing his land. He would lose by sitting idle, if his neighbor brought him his fuel; still more if he hauled it; for he would be wearing his wagon and losing manure. Were he to hire himself and his wagon to another for the same quantity of fuel that he could have cut on his own property, he would lose, for his farm would be uncleared. So likewise, in taking the stone for his house from his own

fields, he gains doubly, for his house is built, and his land is cleared.

With every improvement in the machinery of exchange, there is a diminution in the proportion which that machinery bears to the mass of the commodities exchanged. The man who formerly sent to market his half-fed cattle, with horses and men to drive them, and food for their consumption on the road, now fattens them on the ground, and sends them by railroad ready for the slaughter-house-keeping his men and horses at home to fence and drain; and employing the refuse of his hay and oats in fertilizing his farra. His production doubling, he accumulates rapidly, while the people around him have more food and clothing. He needs laborers in the field, and these require shoes, coats, and houses. The shoemaker and carpenter now join the community, eating the food on the spot where it had been produced. The consumption of flour increasing, the miller comes to eat his share while preparing that of others, and the labor of exchanging is again diminished, leaving more to be given to the land. The lime being now turned up, tons of turnips are obtained from the same surface that before gave bushels of rye. The woollen-mill coming next, and the wool no longer employing wagons and horses, these are turned to transporting coal or iron ore. Production again increasing, the new wealth takes the form of a cotton-mill; and with every step the farmer finds thus new demands on the great machine he has constructed, with increase in his power to improve it. He now obtains large supplies of beef and mutton, wheat, butter, eggs, poultry, cheese, and other commodities for which the climate is suited; and all from the same land which at first had scarcely afforded the rye required for the support of life.

We have here the establishment of a local attraction tending to neutralize that central one of the great city; and where such local centres most exist, there will be always found the greatest development of individuality, and the most rapid progress in wealth and power. The more nearly the societary action approximates to that established throughout the great system of which our planet forms a part, the more perfect will be the harmony; and the more rapidly will man move towards his true position, that of a being of power.

§ 3. We are accustomed to measure the wealth of individuals or communities, by the value of the property they hold;