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 [pg 025] 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 [pg 026] 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.”
Chapter II. Forces In Production Of Wealth.
Nature.—When men learn to meet their wants by exertion in accord with nature's ways, they are said to use the forces of nature in production of wealth. Every accumulation of materials for satisfying future needs implies some control over natural objects. If advantage is taken of natural motions or other activities to bring about larger accumulation, the man whose plans secure this has gained control over, and so property-rights in, the natural force which he has harnessed. The wind caught by a sail and the water controlled by a dam contribute to the power, and indirectly to the wealth, of the man who contrives to make them move things for him. The directive actions of men necessarily appropriate the natural objects which they use, together with all the qualities of those objects.
Energy.—Human exertion produces wealth, as we have seen, whenever it anticipates and provides for future wants by securing at hand the things to be used. So far as this anticipation includes control of forces or qualities in nature, these natural agencies contribute to wealth of individuals or communities. So voluntary human exertion is combined with involuntary forces of outside nature to give wealth. No amount of [pg 028] gold in Alaska is wealth until some human ability has appropriated it to human uses; but the mere fact of locating a claim for mining purposes gives the prospector advantage over any other man because of his foresight. So every activity of nature may become a factor in wealth by human ingenuity in making it useful.
Natural forces.—Such natural agencies for producing wealth are seen in the simple properties of material bodies, such as the metals or woods or grains or fruits or flowers possess. We secure these properties for our uses. Gravity, sound, heat, light, electricity, chemical affinity, crystallization, even life itself, are names for certain forms of energy in nature which men are using more or less to meet their wants. Whenever exertion is needed to provide for using these, the thought of wealth is connected with the forces themselves. The fish in the sea and rivers become wealth to one who has caught them, and even more distinctly the property of the community which has protected them in breeding. Sunlight may reach all alike in welfare, but the man who has contrived to make it print pictures for him has made sunlight into wealth in the picture. Equally so the farmer's energy and contrivance use the properties of soil and climate and the vital energies of seeds to make wealth in a crop.
Control for welfare.—As each individual worker gains control over any of these properties or forces he advances in wealth and welfare. It becomes his own means of meeting wants. If all individuals in a community share in such control, they think of the good [pg 029] things as part of the general welfare, and do not enumerate them in anybody's wealth except when comparing their own condition with that of another community. Advantages of this kind constantly tend to become more universal, and so to count very little in individual wealth. Many advantages of civilization today belong to all the world alike, so that nature seems to meet our wants gratuitously; but the story of progress shows that these are gifts inherited from the wealth of past ages. The human exertion which they once cost is overlooked in the ease of the present. Mere fire was once a treasure to be cherished and kept at much expenditure of strength and foresight. Now we kindle a fire so easily that nobody thinks of it as a part of the world's wealth.