lute want; and those which succeeded did so at the cost of undergoing severe hardships of cold and hunger, and consequent sickness. 7. Single men and small bodies of men are weak in the presence of nature. She is their mistress, not they her masters. They must take what she chooses to give, and retreat or perish if her gifts are not sufficient for their needs. Large bodies of men, united by industrial association for the mastery of nature, are strong in her presence. They can wrest from her what they need. They can clear away her forests, drain her swamps, bring the soil under tillage, and secure a larger share of necessary things for each, than when a small number seemed to possess everything. 8. Association with his fellowmen is man's first need, if he is to attain a comfortable existence. By this term "association" is meant not only a conscious and understood agreement between several men for the pursuit of a common object; it means the interlacing of men's lives in mutual service, even though they never have seen each other's faces. Thus when I buy a barrel of flour, I am acting in association with the farmer who grew the wheat; the trader who bought it of him; the miller who ground it; the barrel-maker who prepared the packing which holds it; the railroad men who brought it from the mill; the dealer from whom I bought it; and many others besides these. Of the whole series I know only the last, yet each of them has been serving me; and I in turn, by my payment for the flour, have been serving each of them. It is this association which is the mark of a civilized life, and which makes it possible for millions to have the use of more food and clothing than hundreds did before. 9. The power over nature which we attain through this association, we call wealth. As it is not a single man, but the whole body of men in the country, who acquire this power, wealth is first of all a social possession. When we speak of individual men as wealthy, we mean that in the distribution of this power a larger share has fallen to some than to others. This is just when it is the result of greater personal intelligence or capacity, which has enabled these to render greater services to society than others have. It is unjust when it has been obtained by force, as in the conquest of a weaker people by a stronger, or by fraud of any kind. So long as men differ in ability, some will command a greater share of the results from subduing the world to our use than others do. We have a right to complain of this only when they have got their larger share by wrong ways. 10. While wealth is the same as power over nature, value is the measure or indication of nature's resistance to our obtaining the things we need. It is not the same as utility: air and water are the most useful substances we know of, but air has no value and water very little, because they are so plentiful. Value does not depend on mere scarcity, for there are some very scarce things for which there is very little demand, as they have no use that we know of. To be valuable a thing must be wanted for use, or for ornament, or as a curiosity, and also must be something we cannot get without an effort. If we can reduce the amount of effort needed to obtain it, then the value falls. If there be a great decrease of the supply, then the value rises. The value of diamonds has fallen since the discovery of the diamond-mines in southern Africa, while rubies and emeralds are as valuable as before. The value of petroleum has risen since the Pennsylvania oil-wells began to give out. 11. It is not always true that value falls proportionally to an increase of the supply. If new uses are found for the article, and a greater demand is thus created, its value may remain much the same, or the fall in its value may be much less than the increase. Thus between 1492 and 1792 the supply of Gold and Silver coin in Europe increased thirtyfold by importation from America. Their value, however, fell not to one-thirtieth, but to one-twelfth of what it had been before America was discovered. In this connection it is necessary to remember that Gold and Silver are not metals whose value remains fixed. They are called the precious metals because they are the rarest for which men have much use, and are therefore the most valuable that are largely used. Their value varies from time to time with the demand for them, and with the supply, just as does the value of iron or of wheat. 12. As nearly everything we have a use for keeps falling in value, through our devising better ways of getting it, or finding new supplies of it, the price we pay for articles is not always what it costs to produce them. If we can reproduce or replace them with less outlay of labor than when they were made, we will not pay more for them than they would now cost. Thus a house that has stood for a century is not worth what it cost to build it. All the materials of which it is made had to be hauled to the site by horses or oxen. The bricks in the walls were made by hand. The timber was cut into boards in a saw-pit, one man pulling the saw up through the log, another down. The boards were planed by hand. The glass was made by a laborious method. All these things are done more cheaply now, mostly by machinery and steam-power. So we are willing to pay for such a house only what it would require to build another house like it, using modern tools, machinery and the like. 13. The price of anything, therefore, is not the cost of making it, but the cost of replacing it, or making another like it. In some cases, as of articles recently made, the two costs are the same. In the case of the bulk of the wealth of a country the two are not the same. The present price of a State like Pennsylvania, for instance, is not equal to the amount of labor expended in clearing, fencing and draining the fields, making the roads, streets and railroads, building the houses, bridging the rivers, sinking the wells, digging the mines, tunnelling the mountains, and so forth. It is only the cost of the labor needed to have taken Pennsylvania as William Penn found it, and to make it what it is by means of modern machinery, tools and appliances of all sorts. Even if we deduct all the labor whose results have been consumed, we shall find that Pennsylvania cost a great deal more than it could be sold for. 14. With the progress of intelligence, and the growth of numbers, man acquires the power over nature we call wealth, while the values of the things we desire fall. Mankind passes through savagery and barbarism to civilization, through increase of numbers and of industrial association, which this makes possible. The more people in a country, the larger should be the share of necessaries which falls to each. Men pass from worse to better in land, labor and food. CHAPTER III. Land and Farming. I. We have seen that man passes through three stages in the use of land. He is first a hunter, then a shepherd, then a farmer. In each new stage he needs less land, and gets more out of it, than in the preceding. This lessening of the area he needs, and increase of food and clothing obtained, does not stop with his entrance upon farming. As he acquires more power through the increase of numbers and of intelligence, and through the association with his fellows thus made possible, he narrows still further the area of land he tills, and yet increases his crops. 2. Early farming is confined to the poorer soils, which are dry, thin and easily tilled. They need no drainage, and can be ploughed with a roughly shaped log, and harrowed with a bush. The crop will be a scanty one, perhaps seven or eight bushels of wheat to the acre; but that is the best that is possible to a farming which is weak in its power to conquer nature. Later farming comes down from the dry hilltops to the richer valleys below them. It finds in the creek and river "bottoms" the elements of fertility, which the circulation of water has carried down from the higher lands. It applies drainage to their wetter soils, and gets a far larger return for the labor expended. It is a mistake therefore to assume that those who first settle a country will bring the best lands under tillage. We might as well assume that they will burn coal rather than wood, or travel by rail rather than on horseback. They |