The Rural Science Series
Edited by L. H. Bailey
Rural Wealth and Welfare
Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm Life
By
Geo. T. Fairchild, LL.D.
New York
The MacMillan Company
London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd.
1900
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface.
Introduction. General Welfare.
Part I. Productive Industries: Analysis of Aims, Forces, Means and
Methods.
Chapter I. Aims Of Industry.
Chapter II. Forces In Production Of Wealth.
Chapter III. Labor Defined And Classified.
Chapter IV. Capital Defined And Classified.
Chapter V. Personal Attainments.
Chapter VI. Combination Of Forces For Individual Efficiency.
Chapter VII. Methods Of Association.
Chapter VIII. Exchange: Advantages, Limitations And Tendencies.
Chapter IX. Value The Basis Of Exchange.
Chapter X. Exchange—Its Machinery.
Chapter XI. Banks And Banking.
Chapter XII. Deferred Settlement And Credit Expansion.
Chapter XIII. Technical Division Of Labor.
Chapter XIV. Aggregation Of Industry.
Chapter XV. Special Incentives To Production.
Chapter XVI. Business Security.
Part II. Distribution of Wealth for Welfare.
Chapter XVII. General Principles Of Fair Distribution.
Chapter XVIII. Wages And Profits.
Chapter XIX. Conflict Between Wage-Earners And Profit-Makers.
Chapter XX. Proceeds Of Capital: Interest And Rent.
Chapter XXI. Principles Of Interest.
Chapter XXII. Principles Of Land Rent.
Part III. Consumption of Wealth.
Chapter XXIII. Wealth Used By Individuals.
Chapter XXIV. Prudent Consumption.
Chapter XXV. Imprudent Consumption.
Chapter XXVI. Social Organization For Consumption.
Chapter XXVII. Economic Functions Of Government.
Chapter XXVIII. Economic Machinery Of Government.
Conclusion.
Index.
Advertisements.
DEDICATION
To The Thousands Of Students In Agricultural Colleges
With Whom I Have Studied Economic Questions
During The Past Thirty-Five Years
This little volume is thankfully dedicated
In Remembrance Of
Many Pleasant Hours
Geo. T. Fairchild
PREFACE.
In giving these pages to the public I offer no apology for a restatement
of fundamental principles always requiring adjustment to new life and
circumstances; but economic literature has usually dealt too exclusively
with the phenomena of manufactures and commerce to gain the sympathy of
rural people. An experience of more than thirty years in handling such
subjects at the Michigan and Kansas Agricultural Colleges, together with
the expressed confidence of former pupils whose judgment I trust, has led
me into the effort to bring the subject home to farmers and farmers’
families in this elementary way.
I have carefully refrained from quotations, or even references to works
consulted, for the obvious reason that such formalities would distract the
attention of most readers from the direct, common-sense thinking desired,
and render the style of the book more complex. I hereby acknowledge my
debt to the leading writers of past and present upon most of the topics
treated, not excluding any school or party.
The statements of facts I have taken from best authorities, with care to
verify, if possible, by comparisons. Many data have been diligently
compiled and rearranged for more exact presentation of facts, and the
phenomena of prices of farm crops have been analyzed with especial care.
The necessities of the printed volume have to some extent obscured the
charts by reduction, but I trust they may be intelligible and interesting
to all students of agricultural interests.
No attempt has been made to argue or to expound difficulties beyond a
simple statement of principles involved, and the spirit of controversy has
been absent from my thoughts throughout. Whatever bias of opinion may
appear is without a tinge of bitterness toward those who may differ. I
trust that men of all views may recognize in these pages the wish of their
author to have only truth prevail.
In offering this volume to farmers I do not assume that all questions of
wealth and welfare can be settled by rule. I hope to point out the actual
trend of facts, the universal principles sustained by the facts, and means
of most ready adjustment to circumstances in the evolutions of trade and
manufacture. The business sense of farmers is appealed to for the sake of
their own welfare. Several important questions of rural welfare have been
touched only suggestively because the limits of the volume could not admit
of fuller treatment.
My gratitude is offered especially to Professor Liberty H. Bailey, of
Cornell University, to whose suggestion and patient attention the
existence of this volume is due.
George T. Fairchild.
BEREA COLLEGE, KENTUCKY,
March 1, 1900.
INTRODUCTION. GENERAL WELFARE.
_Elements of welfare._—The welfare of communities, like that of
individuals, is made up of health, wealth, wisdom and virtue. If we can
say of any human being that lie is healthy, wealthy, wise and good, we are
sure of his satisfaction so far as it depends upon self. When a community
is made up of individuals kept in health and strength from birth to old
age, sustained with accumulated treasures, wise enough to use both
strength and wealth to advantage, and upright, just and kind in all human
relations, our ideals of welfare are met.
These are four different kinds of welfare, each of which is essential, and
only confusion of thought follows any attempt to treat them all as wealth,
however they may be intermingled and exchanged. Health is essential in
gaining a full measure of wealth and wisdom, and perhaps in maintaining
genuine character; but a healthy life gives no assurance of complete
welfare. The facts concerning health in a community make a distinct
subject of study for promotion of welfare, and we call it public hygiene.
The science of education deals with ways and means of securing public
wisdom. The science of government includes all facts relative to public
virtue. So the facts by which we know the nature and uses of accumulated
wealth in any community make a distinct study under the name economic
science; it deals with certain definite groups of facts. To call
everything good “wealth” and everything evil “ilth” adds nothing but
confusion to our thoughts.
_Mutual welfare._—Every human being in society is directly interested in
the study of wealth as related to his own and his neighbors’ welfare. No
one can understand his relations to those about him in the family, the
neighborhood, his country and the world without some understanding of the
sources and uses of wealth all about him. His very industry gains its
reward by certain means in society depending upon economic principles. His
motives for accumulating wealth have a distinct place. His uses of
accumulated wealth are a part of the general facts which make wealth
desirable. So the study of wealth in society must be everybody’s study, if
each wishes to do best for himself or for his neighbors. In such study of
welfare every one finds his interests completely blended with the
interests of others. His existence is part of a larger existence called
society, from which he receives himself in large measure and most of his
satisfaction; to which he contributes in like measure a portion of its
essential character and future existence.
The old idea that one gives up freedom of self for the advantages given by
society has no foundation in fact, because we are born into our place in
society without power to escape its advantages, disadvantages or
responsibilities. The maxim “Each for all and all for each” is thoroughly
grounded in the constitution of man; his needs and abilities enforce
society and insist upon community of interests. Even personal wealth
confers little welfare outside of its relations to other human beings. The
whole progress of the human race tends toward acceptance of the clear
vision of Tennyson, where
“All men find their good in all men’s good,
And all men join in noble brotherhood.”
Each stage in the progress of the conquest of nature to meet human wants,
from the gathering of wild fruits, through hunting and fishing,
domestication of animals, herding, and tillage of permanent fields, to the
manufacture of universal comforts and tools, and to general commerce, has
made more important the welfare of neighbors. Even the wars of our century
are waged in the name of and for the sake of humanity. The study of
individual welfare involves the public welfare. Welfare of a class is
dependent upon the welfare of all classes. Wealth of individuals is
genuine wealth in connection only with the wealth of the world. Welfare
without wealth would imply the annihilation of space, of time, and of all
forces acting in opposition to wishes.
_Wealth in farming._—The subject of the following pages is wealth, how it
is accumulated, how distributed to individual control and how finally
consumed for the welfare of all concerned. But special reference is made
to the sources of wealth as a means of welfare in rural life, and to the
bearing of definite economic principles upon farming, especially in these
United States of America. Farming is, and must always remain, a chief
factor in both wealth and welfare, and its relations to the industry of
the world grow more important to every farmer as the world comes nearer to
him. We cannot now live in such isolation as our fathers loved. The
markets of the world and the methods of other farmers all over the world
affect the daily life of every tiller of the soil today. Commerce in the
products of farm and household reaches every interest, when the ordinary
mail sack goes round the world in less time than it took our immediate
ancestors to go as pioneers from Massachusetts to Ohio. It seems possible
to show from the experiences of farm life the essential principles of
wealth-making and wealth-handling, including the tendencies under a
world-wide commerce. These every farmer and laborer needs for his
business, for his home, and for his country.
Nature Of Wealth
_Wealth defined._—If we look at the objects which men number in speaking
of their wealth, we shall soon find the list differing in important
particulars from the list of things which they enjoy. All enjoyable things
contribute to welfare, but not all are wealth. Some, like the air and the
sunshine, if never lacking, cannot be counted, _because no storing against
future need is practicable_; but the fan that cools the air and the coal
that gives heat are counted when they are stored as means of meeting
future wants. If we could not foresee wants of ourselves or of those
dependent upon us, we could not gather means of supply for those wants. If
we had all wants supplied at a wish or a prayer, we should have no
incentive to store. The pampered child whose every wish is met has no
clear conception of wealth or its uses. Let him be without a meal, and he
seeks provision for the future by an effort to save what is left over from
his last meal and by exertion to add to his store in anticipation of want.
Thus wants, to be met only by exertion, are the foundation of the
universal ideas of wealth, and whatever we have stored as a provision
against wants becomes our wealth. If hunger were our only desire, our
wealth would include only stores of food, conveniences for storing, means
of increasing the store, and means of utilizing the articles to be eaten.
Each desire adds to the range of articles which may enter our list of
objects of wealth until enumeration is impossible. None of these, however,
will be stored as wealth beyond the limits of anticipated use: if so
stored, they add nothing to the supposed wealth. An isolated family, able
to consume only thirty bushels of potatoes in a season, is not more
wealthy from having three hundred bushels stored: the wealth is measured
by actual relations to wants not otherwise supplied. Even in a populous
city, the three hundred bushels of potatoes become a store of wealth only
when other people need them and _are able in turn to meet other wants of
the owners_.
Indeed, we soon come to estimate any object of wealth according to its
power, directly or indirectly, to meet the first want that comes. A
cherished memento of friendship may be ever so gratifying, and yet find no
place in our account of wealth, because it can serve no purpose in meeting
other wants.
Any object of wealth may cease to be counted, not because it has changed,
but because wants have changed. The last year’s bonnet goes for a song,
because the fashion changes; the reaper rots behind the barn or at the
roadside, because the harvester is wanted in its place. So the wealth in
any object is limited by its relation to the present or prospective wants
of its owner, and his control to meet these wants. The wealth of any
community is its store of material objects suited to the current wants or
fitted to exchange with other communities for more suitable articles of
use. We estimate it only by thinking of uses in producing pleasure or
preventing pain, its limitations in quantity to a certain range of wants,
and its control for use or transfer by an owner.
_Wealth distinguished from power._—Wealth is not to be confused with power
of other kinds. Power may be for future exertion; wealth is the result of
exertion. Power may take any form of welfare,—health, wisdom, character,
as well as wealth. So no personal abilities can be counted as wealth,
however useful they may be as means of gaining it. Jenny Lind’s abilities
as a singer may have been better than wealth; but exertion of those
abilities in the United States enabled her to carry back to Europe wealth
of which she had none before coming. The ingenuity of Elias Howe exerted
upon the sewing machine has been an immense source of wealth and welfare
to the world, but it alone could not secure him daily food. Your words and
my music combined in a song fit to tickle the fancy of the multitude may
transfer wealth to our pockets, but it was in neither the words nor the
music, nor yet in the song, and still less in the power to contrive them.
If wealth in material things had not been in possession of the multitude,
the same sweet sounds might have given satisfaction to the crowds without
an idea of wealth in the transaction. Much of the welfare of the world is
from exertion of powers entirely independent of wealth. The chief joys of
home are not measured by the wealth in our tenement. The chief welfare of
society is only incidentally connected with wealth.
Chart No. I
_Fluctuation of Farms and Farm Interests since 1850_
At the top is shown the relative size of farms at the close of each census
period, with the number of acres tilled and untilled. The lower part of
the chart shows the changes in different farm interests, especially in the
amount and character of capital employed and the number of people engaged
in agriculture. Assuming the conditions of 1850 to be par, the increase or
decrease is shown for each kind of live stock, the number of farms, the
total farm population, and the number of farm managers, as well as the
valuation of real estate and of live stock. To illustrate, take No. 4, the
number of cattle, excluding the cows. In 1860 there were 1.5 times as many
as in 1850. In 1870, on account of the consumption and disturbance of the
war, the number was reduced to 1.4 times as many. In 1880 there were more
than 2.3 times as many, and in 1890 there were 3.48 times as many. In a
few instances the estimate for 1897, though not an accurate enumeration,
is added for comparison. A careful study of these various changes will
show that while the total population in 1890 was only 2.7 times the
population of 1850, the total number of people employed in farm
occupations of every kind was 2.88 times as great; although the number of
independent farmers was only 2.28 times as great. The total value of real
estate in farms was over four times as great, and the total value of live
stock exactly corresponded. The number of cows, sheep and hogs had not
kept up with the population; while the number of beef cattle and horses
and mules had increased much more rapidly. The fact that the value of live
stock had increased in much greater proportion than the numbers shows that
there has been great improvement in the individual character of the
animals. That the average wealth of farm proprietors is more than
three-fourths as large again is shown by comparison of the number of
farmers with the value of the farms. That the number of mules, cattle and
hogs actually decreased between 1860 and 1870 indicates the enormous
consumption of the armies in the Civil War.
[Chart.]
Chart I. Showing the rate of increase in farms and farm live stock as
compared with population. See explanation, p. 8.
Chart No. II
_Progress of the United States in Farm Crops since 1850_
This chart indicates to the eyes facts shown by the census reports as to
the relative increase or decrease of certain staple crops in comparison
with the population. Assuming the conditions of 1850 to be par, the
several lines indicated by numbers show the ratio of the several crops to
the crop of 1850. Thus the wheat crop in 1860 was nearly .75 greater than
in 1850; in 1870 it was 2.87 times as great; in 1880 it was nearly 4.6
times as great; only a little greater in 1890, but in 1897 was nearly 6
times as great. It should be remarked that the census returns are founded
upon the crop of the previous year, and therefore, will not exactly
correspond with current estimates. At a glance it will appear that rye,
buckwheat, sweet potatoes, sugar and rice have nowhere nearly kept up with
the increase of population, while all the other crops have been
considerably in excess. The barley crop could not be shown upon the chart
for want of room, but is more than fifteen times as great. The cultivation
of fruits is estimated to be twenty times as great, although the census
returns give insufficient figures for accuracy. It is evident that the
people of the United States demand a better living, as well as raise more
profitable crops, than in 1850. Some striking illustrations of the effects
of the Civil War are seen in the falling off of many crops during that
period. Only oats, wheat and potatoes increased beyond the increase in
population. Most of the others actually diminished; and the staple
products of the southern states prior to the war have scarcely as yet
regained their previous standing. This is accounted for in part by the
immense destruction of capital, but in larger part by the entire change in
conditions of plantation cultivation.
[Chart.]
Chart II. Showing the rate of increase in total crops for the given
period. See explanation, p. 10.
_Wealth in material objects._—Our attention is called to wealth in
comparing two material objects of desire. One has more uses, more
important uses, more rare uses, than another; or one is less easily
obtained than another. In either case we prize that one in store, as the
more important. We compare two farms, as material aids to different
owners, and call both wealth in different degrees. We note the condition
of two countries as to all the machinery of industry, and know that one
has greater wealth than the other. We compare the accumulations of this
generation with those of our fathers, and rejoice in our advance in wealth
as one important form of power to gain a genuine welfare. Thus, in
comparing our country’s inventory by the census of 1890 with that of 1850,
we find that while its people are only 2.7 times as many, there are 3.15
times as many farms of exactly the same number of acres, though more of
each is cultivated, and that the value of property used in farming is more
than four times as great; so we know that the farmers have increased in
wealth and welfare as compared with our fathers. See Charts I and II.
_Rural wealth analyzed._—A brief analysis of rural wealth in any
established community will help to understand the meaning of the word and
its relation to welfare. First may be named the farm fields and
plantations brought by exertions continued through long years from raw
forest or prairie to present tilth and productiveness. An English farmer,
when asked how long it took to establish a certain permanent pasture,
replied, “Three hundred years.” Second, all fences, drives and farm
buildings, for convenience of handling and storing produce and stock.
Third, all the tools and implements of the trade. Fourth, all domestic
animals of every kind, and all attendants of their sustenance and growth,
including feed and manure. Fifth, all contrivances for marketing and
preparing for market. Sixth, all highways between neighbors and toward
market. Seventh, all local elevators, stock-yards and depot facilities.
Eighth, the homes, with all material comforts and utensils. Ninth, any
store of provisions in cellar, pantry, smokehouse or bin. Tenth, all
personal belongings for clothing, adornment and enjoyment. Eleventh, the
family libraries and associated treasures. Twelfth, any actual store of
gold, silver or other current wealth available for future wants. This does
not include notes, mortgages, bonds, or any other promises to pay, nor
certificates of stock in any business enterprise, because these are mere
titles to wealth supposed to exist elsewhere,—as distinct from the wealth
as the deed is from the farm. Thirteenth, any peculiar advantages of
location, scenery, pure air, pure water and agreeable temperature, that
are controlled by owners for personal advantage or enjoyment, and can be
objects of desire to others. Fourteenth, any “good will” attached to, and
part of, particular farms, due to long established methods and facilities
in preparing or marketing produce. If such “good will” is attached to a
person rather than to the place, it is not wealth, but power.
The last two are seldom distinctly enumerated by the assessor, yet they
are clearly estimated in any exchange of places or transfer of titles.
They are owned, used and transferred like other forms of wealth, and save
future exertions to obtain them. All these are wealth because they
contribute to welfare through being accumulated materials to meet future
wants, and are to be measured in any estimate by their relation to the
wants they will satisfy and the exertions they will save.
_Future wants certain._—Wants and exertions are readily seen to be at the
foundation of all ideas of wealth as indicated above. If we are uncertain
as to the continuance of any wants or uncertain as to the conditions for
meeting those wants, we stop accumulation of materials for satisfying
them. Exertion stops unless the satisfaction to be gained by our effort is
foreseen with a reasonable certainty. The farmer is never absolutely sure
of returns for his labor upon the cornfield; but he is reasonably certain,
and is absolutely certain that the crop will not come without labor. This
assumed continuance of individual wants and their relations gives the
grand motive for wealth gathering.
The means of protection and support for physical life will be needed by
ourselves and our children. Tools of better form and machinery of better
manufacture will be needed to reduce exertion in future. Reduced exertion
for a given satisfaction will mean a fuller supply of things we are going
to need still. If these wants are fully met, we are going to have leisure
to satisfy larger and higher wants. It is the certainty that each advance
of wealth will bring advancing wants to consume more wealth, that gives a
genuine motive to activity in gaining wealth, i.e., in accumulating the
things to be used. The degree of uncertainty in all future plans leads to
over-estimating the importance of gold, diamonds or any forms of wealth
that can most easily be transferred between places or individuals, or be
turned to account in each change of necessities.
_Ownership._—The importance of wants and exertion emphasizes the
importance of the individual self in all ideas of wealth. The _ownership_
of one’s _own_ abilities and their products is absolutely essential to his
care for accumulation, and that care is in proportion to his security in
such ownership. Directly or indirectly, every exertion and every sacrifice
must depend upon confidence that it will bring its object; but
wealth-getting has no object without control, in some measure, of results.
This fact makes individual ownership an essential to the highest exertion,
a natural sequence to the right of liberty.
Property rights are grounded in the general and individual welfare, as
shown in human nature and in the progress of the world along the line of
protection to property. Those communities are most happy which best
protect individual property. As J. E. Thorold Rogers remarks, “Sacredness
is accorded to private property, because society prospers by it.” Even
theorizers who denounce individual property-holding found their argument
upon the equity of individual rights in property. War is less harmful than
anarchy, because it ensures a measure of control. Slavery has sometimes
been less injurious than war in giving security to enjoy a portion of
self. But a conquest of freedom by bloodshed is worth its cost in
self-control. Civilization advances as individual responsibility for
property, as well as everything else, is recognized.
Christianity is ideally practical in upholding every man’s right to
self-control in the interest of all. It distinguishes equity from equality
in distribution of all good, wealth included. Public property is rightly
public when the wants and energies of all the community are best provided
for by such common ownership. Proof in each particular case is essential
against the presumption that individual needs are the best impulses to
provision for welfare. Even common property is limited necessarily to the
numbers who can use it. No property or wealth can exist for anybody
without the control of some human individuals for whom it is accumulated.
_Wants individual._—We are likely to lose sight of the essential
individuality of wants and exertions which make wealth possible, because
in any community exchange of services modifies the direct relation of each
man’s wants to his accumulations. Assuming that others, wanting food, will
exchange clothing for it, one man stores food alone, but in quantities far
beyond his own need, measuring its relation to all his material wants
through the wants and exertions of others. He feels even more sure of the
continued activity of wants and powers among a multitude than if he had
but one neighbor; but individuals, after all, must need his products and
exert themselves to meet the need, or all his calculations fail.
_Progress in welfare._—Economic progress must show a larger welfare to
individuals of the community. The familiar figure by which a commonwealth
is compared to an animal organism fails to include the important fact that
the individuals of the commonwealth furnish the only reason for the
existence of the commonwealth itself, as well as its only means of
existence. The cells of the animal, or even the most important organs,
have no reason for existence in themselves. Each individual man furnishes
the reasons for his activity, and the needs of individual men furnish the
only reason for having a commonwealth.
We can speak of progress, then, only when these individuals secure a
better use of wealth in some way. It may be by accumulation through saving
from the full years for the empty, as older communities can endure a
drought with little suffering, while pioneers are ruined. It may be by an
increased product for a given exertion, as illustrated by every
labor-saving implement upon the farm or in the factory. It may be by
lessening exertion for a given product, as in the devices of kitchen and
dairy to make tasks lighter. It may be in better distribution of the total
product through readier and fairer exchanges of services or products, as
happens with every improvement in transportation and every means for
fairer understanding in a bargain. Lastly, it may be in more economical
expenditure for common wants, as in maintaining government machinery.
Usually, progress has been marked along several of these lines at once, if
not all of them. There is reason in the statement of Charles Francis Adams
that the last century far exceeds the gain of a thousand years before.
_Production, distribution, consumption._—Full consideration of rural
wealth as related to welfare must first give the principles upon which
wealth is produced, including exchange with all its machinery; for the
marketing of produce is today one of the chief steps in securing wealth by
farming. The thrifty farmer of today is the man of most business tact and
energy, who uses most approved means of raising, handling and marketing
his goods.
It also requires a careful study of principles upon which any product of
exertions, where more than one person has contributed toward the whole,
can be fairly shared between the producers, however they have helped. A
farmer is as thoroughly interested in problems of rent, interest and
profits, if not in wages, as any other worker for wealth or welfare.
It further involves the study of economic uses for wealth, private and
public, since no wealth has found the true reason for its existence till
the uses to which it is put are known. This includes all questions upon
the economic functions of government, the ends to be served, and the
raising and handling of revenues. If any patriots need to know for what,
how and in what measure their country is dependent upon their own
resources, it is the farmers, whose homes make the bulk of the land we
love, whose children furnish the bone and sinew of industry, and whose
interests are most sensitive to misdirected energy in public
administration.
_Security in stable government._—Agriculture, of all industries, can
flourish in that country alone where personal and property rights are
fully understood and respected, where claims are equitably adjusted by a
stable government, and where taxes are properly apportioned and revenues
economically expended.
PART I. PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES: ANALYSIS OF AIMS, FORCES, MEANS AND
METHODS.
Chapter I. Aims Of Industry.
_Production defined._—A very little thought shows that men produce nothing
in the sense of creating. All production is simply overcoming obstacles to
satisfaction of wants as we find these obstacles in space, time and form
or substance of natural objects. In doing this we are confined to mere
ability to move things. The very highest effort of man’s energy today but
proves the saying of Lord Bacon, “All that man can do is to move natural
objects to and from each other: nature working within accomplishes the
rest.” This is fully illustrated in farm operations. The bringing together
of soil, seed, sunshine and shower, according to their natures, secures
the product of nature—a crop. Moving food and water to the steers, or the
steers to food and water, under proper conditions of warmth, air and
exercise, produces beef. To know how and when and where to move things so
that nature may meet our wishes by what always happens under the same
circumstances, would be to have all the arts of life; in short, production
is the art of moving things. But we distinguish different kinds of
production according to the direct results expected from our motion, as
reducing space and time, modifying the form, or changing the substantial
qualities of things handled.
_Transportation in production._—The change of place necessary to bring
together wants and those things which satisfy them is a method of
producing wealth most apparent everywhere. The bringing of wild fruits
from the forest or the swamp to the home gives them worth. The mere
transportation, change of place, gives them an importance they did not
have on the trees or bushes. In this transportation we put the energy
necessary to take grain from the fields all the way to the bake-ovens, and
finally to our mouths, or to carry the milk from the stable or yard in
pail, can, wagon, train, delivery cart and bottle, to the lips of the
child whose life it maintains. Every kind of material or force expended in
this process of overcoming space is used in the idea that the object is
worth the expenditure in the place finally reached. If the motion stops
anywhere along the way, the wealth is not obtained, or at least is held
only in expectation until the motion can be completed. While each of fifty
individuals may give a hand, and pass his claim to the next for a
consideration, the wealth is all the way increasing in anticipation, as
the object comes nearer its use.
In this progress time as well as space is an important obstacle to be
overcome, and we employ all means of increasing speed, or preserving
against what we call “the ravages of time,” i. e., the operation of
injurious forces acting in time upon most material substances. The methods
employed for storing, curing and forcing to maturity the various forms of
food needed in a community are aimed at meeting this obstacle, and add to
its final worth; indeed these may be the means of giving value to all the
other efforts in transportation, as in moving beef from Kansas City to New
York, or fresh fruit from San Francisco to Boston.
In the same process of putting things where they are needed, all merchants
are engaged. Without the store, the order upon the shelves, the ready
attendant and his despatch in meeting your demand, the pounds of sugar or
salt essential to your comfort could not be had for love or money. These
efforts are an essential part in the motion between wants and objects to
satisfy them. Much of this kind of motion we include under the name
commerce, though that word more directly implies the exchanges involved.
The machinery of commerce is chiefly the means of bringing things wanted
to the people who want them.
Much, however, of the exertion required in all industries, especially in
farming, is simply “to fetch and carry.” It will emphasize this fact to
study, while you eat a piece of cherry pie, the processes involved in
bringing it from the treetop, grainfield, dairy and cane-field, through
mill and store and pantry and oven, to your plate. Transportation cuts a
tremendous figure in production of wealth. In the first stages of social
life it is almost the whole. The hunter talks of “bringing in” his game.
Australians, Hottentots and Digger Indians lived by carrying themselves
from one supply of food to another.
_Transformation in production._—Much of the material gathered by us needs
some change of form to suit our wants. An ax-helve has in it the original
wood of the young hickory brought from the forest, but its form is
fashioned by effort with ax, drawshave, scraper and sandpaper, until it
satisfies the judgment of an expert chopper. This transformation is
employed in any industries where wood, ivory, the metals and other
minerals are shaped by tools, or by molding, or pressing or bending, to
our wishes. Most fabrics are materials put into form. The word manufacture
covers most of such work where materials are manipulated by shaping; but
it also includes many operations with a different aim, to change the
substance itself.
_Transmutation in production._—Men have found that two metals, tin and
copper, melted together produce brass, different in qualities from either.
Farmers have for many centuries contrived, by keeping nature’s forces
under control in the wheat field, to combine certain elements of the soil,
including its moisture, into grain. The single seed has multiplied a
hundredfold through being placed in favorable conditions, with the raw
materials at hand in the fertile soil.
The process of maintaining animals with suitable food for the production
of milk or flesh is similar. The combination of flour, water, salt and
yeast, by heat, first mild and then intense, into a loaf of bread is a
good illustration of a change of qualities by rearrangement of the
elements of a substance. It is sometimes called transmutation, and comes
the nearest possible to creation of material things. The chemist’s
laboratory exists for making such new combinations, and many of the arts
produce materials, like steel, which would not exist without such
combination. But many have seen in the art of agriculture a most prominent
illustration of transmuting coarser elements into products adapted to
human wants for food, shelter and adornment. All such work, however, is
done by bringing objects and forces into such contact that chemical or
vital changes will take place while we wait.
_Production extended._—In all these three directions, or in any
combination of them, transporting, transforming and transmuting materials,
men seek the production of a supply for meeting anticipated wants, and so
contribute directly or indirectly to welfare. No one way of producing what
men need, where they need it, and when they need it, has any superior
claim to the name production. All are making the material yield up welfare
to the one who needs it, and produce wealth just so far as their services
are necessary in bringing the welfare. If ever any step in the process
becomes useless, it ceases to be productive of wealth and becomes waste.
The inventive powers of mankind are always at work to shorten the
processes and hasten the advantages of production. Men study the minutest
workings of nature to find the conditions under which she does her part of
the work. The application of such minute knowledge is a chief part of
every art. This is also the object of science; for, as Guizot says, “It
only began to have a well defined existence when it confined itself to
seeking the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ of nature’s workings.” This
purpose sustains in the United States more than fifty agricultural
experiment stations, united in a great organization, to find how the
natural forces used by farmers do their work.
This prophecy of a noted economist is warranted: “Probably the greatest
economic revolution which the youth of today may in his old age behold,
will be found in this all-important branch of our industries.” When we
know how nature works, we can adjust our little motions in time and place
to promote that work; we shall have the art of moving things to suit our
needs. Nothing can be truer than Tennyson’s line, “We rule by obeying
nature’s powers.”