CHAPTER I.

THE NATURE AND THE VARIOUS FORMS OF CONSUMPTION.

1. CONSUMPTION is the destruction of forms of wealth. Production implies consumption. In general, all commodities are destroyed in entering into new forms of wealth. Thus leather must be destroyed in order to produce shoes. Flour must disappear in the manufacture of bread, and wheat in the making of flour. Every kind of implement or machine or structure is consumed by use. This consumption may be immediate (that is, by a single use), or it may be gradual. The fuel that we burn and the food that we eat are examples of the former; tools, bridges, buildings, and aqueducts are examples of the latter. The consumption may be accomplished in a few days or months, or it may be protracted through centuries.

2. The value which disappears in consumption is not necessarily lost. The value of the leather which the shoemaker destroys re-appears in the shoes. The value of the lumber, stone, and brick consumed by the builder is reproduced in the house. The seed which is cast into the soil utterly perishes, but it furnishes conditions of a value much greater than that which is destroyed.

It is in this way that wealth increases; not merely by adding to the valuable things already existing, but by destroying many of these that there may issue still greater value.

is

The prosperity of a nation is not inversely as the consumption of values, nor is it precisely the opposite. Still, if there very little consumption, there is very little increase of value. 3. Consumption is either voluntary or involuntary. The former is exemplified in the instances heretofore noticed, where man destroys one commodity either for the purpose of producing another, or for the purpose of immediate gratification. Of the latter, we have instances in the natural decay of objects, as the rusting of iron, the mildew of cotton and woollen fabrics, and the wearing away, by attrition, of gold, silver, and other metals; also the destruction caused by vermin. Much of this may be prevented by the prudent foresight which sound economy enjoins, but much loss will inevitably take place. A great deal of consumption comes by what is called accident. Much destruction is caused by fires, steam-boiler explosions, floods and tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

CHAPTER II.

PRODUCTIVE AND UNPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION.

1. VOLUNTARY consumption is either productive or unproductive. The former is when the material appears in a new form and with higher value, as cloth made into garments, and iron into hardware and cutlery. Unproductive consumption occurs both in the instances previously mentioned, — of consumption by natural decay, and that which comes by accident, and in cases where gratification of desire is the sole object sought and achieved, as when one eats and drinks simply for enjoyment, and without reference to the repair of nature's waste or the nourishment of the system.

It is not always easy to discriminate between these two kinds of consumption. We readily see the difference between a man's drinking a quantity of whiskey, not because it will help in the performance of any work, but because he likes it, and the scattering of a quantity of seed over the ground in the spring. There is no doubt that one of these acts is productive, and the other unproductive. But there are cases where the distinction is less clear.

It is not necessarily a case of unproductive consumption, when one destroys value for the sake of gratifying some desire. Probably a majority of men eat and drink simply because they desire food, having no thought of any ulterior object. Yet eating and drinking are absolutely essential

to productive labor. The wealth consumed in this way re-appears, to a large extent, in the products of human industry.

2. Still there is much really unproductive consumption,a destruction of value in the place of which no other value appears. There are, for instance, men and women

"who creep

Into this world to eat and sleep,

And know no reason why they're born,

But simply to consume the corn."

Vast quantities of wealth are consumed in riotous living, in greedy and vulgar extravagance, and unmeaning magnificence. There is also much consumption designed to be productive, but failing of its end through misdirection. In these ways, much wealth is consumed, with no consequent product.

3. It is not always easy to draw the line between the conveniences of life and its luxuries; nor can the extent to which the latter, in any sense of the term, are allowable, be precisely indicated. What to one class of persons may be a luxury, to another class may be almost a necessity. So what might in one age have been a rare and expensive indulgence, is in an advanced age among the most ordinary conveniences. I call special attention to three kinds of consumption.'

1. There is the consumption necessary to life and the performance of productive labor. The word necessary is used here in its liberal, rather than its restricted, sense. The absolute necessities of human life are very few. It does not even require much to keep a man in working condition. But to keep him where there is a larger kind of living, and 1 See Ruskin's Political Economy of Art.