PRODUCTION OF WEALTH.
#16. The Requisites of Production.# The first thing in industry, as we
now see, is to decide what we want; the next thing is to get it, or make
it, or, as we shall say, #produce it#, and we ought obviously to produce
it with the least possible labour. To learn how this may be done, we
must inquire what is needful for the production of wealth. There are, as
is commonly and correctly said, #three requisites of production#; before
we can, in the present state of society, undertake to produce wealth, we
must have the three following things:--
(1) #Land#,
(2) #Labour#,
(3) #Capital#.
In production we bring these things together; we apply labour to the
land, and we employ the capital in assisting the labourer with tools,
and feeding him while he is engaged on the work. We must now proceed to
consider each of the three requisites in succession.
#17. Land or Source of Materials.# The word #production# is a very good
one; it means #drawing forth# (Latin, _pro_, before, and _ducere_, to
draw), and it thus exactly expresses the fact that, when we want to
create wealth, we have to go to some piece of land, or to some lake,
river, or sea, and draw forth the substance which is to be made into
wealth. It does not matter whether the material comes from the surface
of the earth, or from mines and quarries sunk into the earth, or from
seas and oceans. Our food mostly grows upon the land, as in the case of
corn, potatoes, cattle, game, &c.; our clothes are chiefly made of
cotton, flax, wool, skins, raised in like manner. Minerals and metals
are obtained by sinking pits and mines into the crust of the earth.
Rivers, lakes, seas, and oceans are no slight source of wealth: they
yield food, oil, whalebone, sealskin, &c. We cannot manufacture any
goods unless we have some matter to work upon; to make a pin we must get
copper, zinc, and tin out of mines; a ribbon requires the silk and the
dye materials; everything that we touch, and use, and eat, and drink,
contains substance, so that we must always begin by finding a supply of
the right sort of materials.
Commonly, too, we want something more than matter; we want force which
shall help us to carry and work the raw material. People naturally wish
to avoid tiring themselves by labouring with their own arms and legs,
and so they make windmills to grind corn, ships to carry goods,
steam-engines to pump water and to do all sorts of hard work. From the
earth, or, as we say, from Nature, we obtain both the materials of
wealth and the force which helps us to turn the materials into wealth.
Whatever thus furnishes us with the first requisite of production is
called a #natural agent#, that is, something which acts for us and
assists us (Latin, _agens_, acting). Among natural agents #land# is by
far the most important, because, when supplied with abundant sunlight
and, moisture, it may be cultivated and made to yield all kinds of
crops. Accordingly, economists often speak of land, when their remarks
would really apply as well to rocks and rivers. Three-quarters of the
whole surface of the globe is covered with seas; but this vast extent of
salt water furnishes little wealth, except whales, seals, sea-weed, and
a few other kinds of animals and plants. Hence, when we speak of land,
we really mean any source of materials--any natural agent, and we may
say that
#land = source of materials = natural agent#.
#18. Labour.# Nothing is more plain, however, than that natural agents
alone do not make wealth. A man would perish in the most fertile spot if
he did not take some trouble in appropriating the things around him.
Fruit growing wild on the trees must be plucked before it becomes
wealth, and wild game must be caught before it can be cooked and eaten.
We must spend a great deal of labour if we wish to have comfortable
clothes and houses and regular supplies of food; the proper sorts of
materials must be gradually got together, and shaped and manufactured.
Thus the amount of wealth which people can obtain depends far more upon
their activity and skill in labouring than upon the abundance of
materials around them.
As already remarked, North America is a very rich land, containing
plenty of fine soil, seams of coal, veins of metal, rivers full of fish,
and forests of fine timber, everything, in short, needed in the way of
materials; yet the American Indians lived in this land for thousands of
years in great poverty, because they had not the knowledge and
perseverance to enable them to labour properly and produce wealth out
of natural agents. Thus we see clearly that skilful and intelligent and
regular labour is requisite to the production of wealth.
#19. Capital.# In order that we may produce much wealth, we require
something further, namely, the #capital#, which supports labourers while
they are engaged in their work. Men must have food once a day, not to
say two or three times; if then they have no stock of food on hand, they
must go at once and get it in the best way they can, for fear of
starving. They must grub up roots, or gather grass seeds, or catch wild
animals--if they can. When working in this way, they usually spend a
great deal of labour for very little result; Australian natives
sometimes have to cut down a large tree with stone axes, which is very
hard work, in order to catch an opossum or two. Men who live in this way
from hand to mouth have no time nor strength to make arrangements so as
to get food and clothes in the easiest way. It requires much labour to
plough the ground, to harrow it, and sow it with corn, besides fencing
it in; when all this is done it is requisite to wait six months before
the crop can be gathered. Certainly, the amount of food thus obtained is
large compared with the labour: but wild Indians and other ignorant
tribes of men cannot wait while the corn is growing; the poor Australian
natives have to gather grass seeds or find worms and opossums every day.
There is a good Japanese maxim which says, "Dig a well before you are
thirsty," and it is evidently very desirable to do so. But you must have
capital to live upon while you are digging the well. In the same way,
almost every mode of getting wealth without extreme labour requires that
we shall have a stock of food to subsist upon while we are working and
waiting, and #this stock is called capital#. In the absence of capital
people find themselves continually in difficulties, and in danger of
starvation. In the first of her tales on political economy, called
"Life in the Wilds," Miss Martineau has beautifully described the
position of settlers at the Cape of Good Hope, who are imagined to have
been attacked by Bushmen and robbed of their stock of capital. She shows
us how difficult it is to get any food or to do any useful work, because
something else is wanted beforehand--some tool, or material, or at any
rate time to make it. But there is no time to make anything, because all
attention has to be given to finding shelter for the night, and
something for supper. Everybody who wishes to understand the necessity
for capital, and the way capital serves us, should read this tale of
Miss Martineau, and then go on to her other tales about Political
Economy.
We can hardly say that capital is as requisite to production as land and
labour, for the reason that capital must have been the produce of land
and labour. There must always, indeed, be a little capital in
possession, even though it be only the last meal in the stomach, before
we can produce more. But there is no good attempting to say exactly how
capital began to be collected, because it began in the childhood of the
world, when men and women lived more like wild animals than as we live
now. Certain it is that we cannot have loaves of bread, and knives and
forks, and keep ourselves warm with clothes and brick houses, unless we
have a stock of capital to live upon while we are making all these
things. #Capital is requisite, then, not so much that we shall labour,
but that we shall labour economically and with great success.# We may
call it a secondary requisite, and it would be best to state the
requisites of production in this way--
{ #natural agent.#
#Primary requisites# {
{ #labour.#
#Secondary requisite# #capital.#
#20. How to make Labour most Productive.# The great object must be to
make labour as productive as possible, that is, to get as much wealth
as we can with a reasonable amount of labour. In order to do this we
must take care to labour in the most favourable way, and there is no
difficulty in seeing that we ought to labour
(1) #At the best time#;
(2) #At the best place#;
(3) #In the best manner#.
#21. Work at the best Time.# Of course we ought to do things when it is
most easy to do them, and when we are likely to get most produce for our
labour. The angler goes to the river in the early morning or the
evening, when the fish will bite; the farmer makes hay while the sun
shines; the miller grinds corn when the breeze is fresh, or the stream
full; and the skipper starts when wind and tide are in his favour. By
long experience farmers have found out the best time of year for doing
every kind of work: seed is sown in autumn or spring; manure is carried
in winter when the ground is frozen; hedges and ditches are mended when
there is nothing else to do, and the harvest is gathered just when it is
ripe, and the weather is fine. Norwegian peasants work hard all day in
July and August to cut as much grass, and make as much hay as possible.
They never think of timber then, because they know that there will be
plenty of time during the long winter to cut down trees; and when the
snow fills up all the hollows in the mountain side, they can easily drag
the trees down to the rivers, which rise high with floods after the
melting of the snow, and carry the logs away, without further labour, to
the towns and ports. It is a good rule not to do to-day what we can
probably do more easily to-morrow: but it is a still better rule not to
put off till to-morrow what we can do more easily to-day. In order,
however, that we may be able to wait and to do each kind of work at the
best time, we must have enough #capital# to live upon in the meantime.
#22. Work at the Best Place.# Again, we should carry on every kind of
work at the place best suited for it, that we can get possession of. In
many cases this is so obvious that the remark seems absurd. Does any one
plant fruit trees on the sea sands, or sow corn among rocks? Of course
not, because there would be no result. No one is so foolish as to spend
his labour in a place where it would be wasted altogether. In other
cases it is a question of degree; there may be some produce here, but
there would be more produce there. In the south of England vines can be
made to grow in the open air, and, in former days, wine used to be made
from grapes grown in England. But vines grow much better on the sunny
hills of France, Spain, and Germany, and the wine which can there be
made with the same labour is far more plentiful and immensely better in
quality. Those, then, who want to make wine had much better remove to
the continent, or, still better, let the French, Spaniards, and Germans
produce wine for us. In England we have good soil and a moist climate
fitted for growing grass, and the best thing which our farmers can do is
to raise cattle and produce plenty of milk, butter, and cheese.
In order that the world may grow as rich as possible, each country
should give its attention to producing what it can produce most easily
in its present circumstances, getting other things in exchange by
foreign trade. The United States can raise endless quantities of cotton,
corn, bacon, meat, fruit, petroleum, besides plenty of gold, silver,
copper, iron, &c. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa will furnish
much wool, hides, sugar, preserved meats, besides gold, copper, and
diamonds. Tropical Africa has palm oil, ivory, teak wood, gum, &c. South
America abounds in cattle from which we get tallow, hides, bones, horns,
essence of beef, &c. China supplies us with vast quantities of tea, in
addition to silk, ginger, and many minor commodities. India sends
cotton, indigo, jute, rice, seeds, sugar, spices, and all kinds of
other products. Every part of the world has some commodities which it
can produce better than other countries, and if men and governments were
wise, they would allow trade to be as free as possible, in order that
each thing shall be produced where it costs the least labour to produce
it.
#23. Work in the Best Manner.# Whatever the kind of industry carried on
in a place, we ought to take care, thirdly, that each labourer works in
the best manner, so as not to waste his labour or to make mistakes.
There are many different ways of setting about the same work, and, in
order that he may choose the best, the labourer must be intelligent and
skilful, or else he must be directed by some person who has knowledge
and skill. Moreover, there must be, as we shall see, great division of
labour, so that each man shall do the kind of work he can do best. We
need, then--
(1) #Science#,
(2) #Division of labour#.
#24. The Need of Science.# In order that he may employ his labour to the
best advantage, it is requisite that the labourer should be not merely
skilful, that is, clever, and practised in handiwork, but that he should
also be guided by a scientific knowledge of the things with which he is
dealing. Knowledge of nature consists, to a great extent, in
understanding the #causes of things#, that is, in knowing what things
must be put together in order that certain other things shall be
produced. Thus the steam-engine is due to the discovery that if heat be
applied to water, the result is steam expanding with much force, so that
a firebox, coal, boiler, and water are causes of force. Whenever we want
to do any work, then, we must begin by learning, if possible, what are
the causes which will produce it most easily and abundantly. By
knowledge we shall often be saved from much needless labour.
As Sir John Herschel has explained, science sometimes shows us that
#things which we wish to do are really impossible#, as, for instance, to
invent a perpetual motion, that is, a machine which moves itself. At
other times science teaches us that the #way in which we are trying to
make something is altogether the wrong way#. Thus, iron-masters used to
think that the best way of smelting iron in the blast-furnace was to
blow the furnace with cold air; science, however, showed that, instead
of being cold, the air sent into the furnace should be made as hot as
possible. Then, again, science often enables us #to do our work with a
great saving of labour#. The boatman or bargeman takes care to learn the
state of the tide, so that he may have the tide in his favour in making
any journey. Meteorologists have now prepared maps of the oceans showing
the sea-captain where he will find winds and currents most favourable to
a rapid voyage. Lastly, #science sometimes leads us to discover
wonderful things which we should not have otherwise thought it possible
to do#; it is sufficient to mention the discovery of photography and the
invention of the telegraph and the telephone. No doubt it may be said
that all the greatest improvements in industry--most of what tends to
raise man above the condition of the brute animals--proceed from
science. The poet Virgil was right when he said, "#Happy is he who knows
the causes of things.#"