The Requisites of Production.—If we start with nothing but the earth in its natural state, inhabited by empty-handed men, and seek to know what is necessary in order that some wealth may be created, we find that nothing is absolutely necessary except labor. By working for a few minutes it is possible to get something that will minister directly to wants. Yet if men begin operations in a state of such poverty that they have only their bare hands to apply to the elements about them, they do not commonly get the usable goods immediately. If a savage wants fish and makes the rudest net with which to catch them, he makes what is a capital good. This is wanted only for the sake of the consumers' wealth which it will help to produce. The end in view has all the while been fish; but the man works first on an instrument for catching them. He makes the net by mere labor, but he catches the fish by means of labor and the net. Without such instruments to aid in production a dense population could not live at all, and a very sparse one could live only in a meager and precarious way. If the instruments are artificially made, or if they are furnished by nature in limited amounts, they are forms of wealth, or goods; but as their function is not to minister directly to consumers' wants, but to help in making things which do this, we distinguish them by the name "producers' goods" or "capital goods." In contrast with them those commodities which directly minister to wants may be called "consumers' goods."
The Production of Intermediate Goods.—All economic goods are means to an end. Wealth is always mediate. It is usually a connecting link between man's labor and the satisfaction of his wants. Man, the worker, first spends himself on nature, and then nature in turn spends itself on him. In production nature is the recipient, but in consumption the recipient is man. This is saying that man serves himself by means of some element in nature which, under his manipulation, becomes a form of wealth. He thrusts a bit of natural matter between himself as a producer and himself as a consumer. All kinds of wealth, then, stand in an intermediate position between original labor and the gratification that ultimately results from it. Some goods, however, are means in the special sense of standing between labor and other goods. Instruments help to make consumers' goods and these add to man's pleasure. Using a tool is not generally agreeable. The tool stands not only between the effort and the gratification that will ultimately follow, but between the effort and the further material good that will directly produce gratification. The hatchet intervenes between the labor that makes it and the firewood it will cut, while the wood acts directly on the man and keeps him warm. Capital goods are in this special sense mediate. They are not wanted for their own sake, but for the sake of something else that is directly useful.[7]
All Labor immediately Productive of Wealth.—When a savage abandons the plan of fishing from the shore and gives his labor for a fortnight to making a canoe with which to fish more effectively, he interposes an interval of time between his labor and its ultimate fruits, the consumers' goods. There is no such interval between the labor and the kind of wealth that it first creates, namely, the canoe. This immediate product of labor is itself a form of wealth and at once rewards the laborer, since it is what he needs, though he does not need it for consumption. Industry always pays as it goes and tolerates no hiatus between labor and wealth in some form.
Organized Industry immediately Productive of Consumers' Goods.—If one man were keeping the stock of canoes of a few fishermen in repair and taking as his pay a share of each day's catch, he would not have to wait for his food any longer than the fishermen themselves. This mode of conducting the industry, however, involves organization. If each fisherman had to make his first canoe, it would be necessary for him to wait for fish; but as soon as a stock of canoes has been obtained and a special set of men assigned to the work of keeping this stock intact in number and quality, that necessity entirely ceases. Five men may do nothing but fish while a sixth keeps their stock of canoes intact by repairing old ones left on the shore and making new ones to replace such as are beyond repairing. Fishing and boat building may go on simultaneously, and all the men may go share and share in each day's catch.[8] This is a type of what goes on in modern industry, where a complex stock of capital goods always exists and is kept intact by the action of a class of persons who share the returns that come from using the stock. None of these persons has to wait for food, although some of them devote themselves exclusively to the production of tools. This fact shows that the necessity for waiting, as well as working, wherever instruments are in the process of manufacture, is not among the universal phenomena of economics, and that it is not present in that organized industry which we chiefly study. Such a permanent stock of capital goods as the fishing community of our illustration possesses would enable it to get its food, the fish, day by day, by working in different ways and using the permanent stock. If we call this permanent supply of canoes, etc., capital, it is, in a causal way, mediate wealth, though it is not so in point of time. Some labor is spent each day on it, and itself creates each day some consumers' wealth. These two operations go on simultaneously, and the men who work to maintain the stock and those who use it get their returns together. In very primitive life the work spent on capital goods and that spent on consumers' goods are not always synchronous, but organization and the acquiring of a permanent fund of capital make them so. Work to-day and you eat to-day food that is a consequence of the working. In point of time the canoe makers are fed as promptly as the fishermen, and this fact is duplicated in every part of the industrial system. We shall later see more fully what this signifies, but it is clear that any study of this phenomenon—the synchronizing of labor and its reward—takes us out of the field of Universal Economics, since it does not appear in the industry of primitive beginnings, but is the fruit of organization.[9]
FOOTNOTES
[1] Past usage renders the somewhat misleading term Political Economy more available than the more accurately descriptive term Social Economics, as the title of the science which treats of the creation and use of wealth by an organized society. Either title implies the existence of such an organization, but the word political calls attention to the fact that it is under a government. The fact that, in a study of wealth, is most important is that the exchanges of products which spontaneously take place create an industrial society whose activities, going on as they do under a government, constitute the subject of the studies which are properly indicated by the traditional term, Political Economy. Government as such is not the subject of those studies.
[2] The term final utility is used with much the same significance as specific importance. It is the utility of the last and least important part of the supply, and the use of the term requires us to think of the supply as offered to users unit by unit till the whole amount is in their hands. The first unit, when it stands alone, is more important than any later one will be. The second is of less consequence, and the last is the least important of all. When, however, all have been supplied and are together available for use, one is as important as another. Each one has an effective utility which is measured by the service rendered by the last one. The term specific indicates that we measure the importance of the supply of an article not in its entirety, but bit by bit, while the term effective is the antithesis of absolute and means that each bit of the supply not only renders an absolute service, but renders one which would not be gratuitously rendered by some other part of the supply in case this portion were removed or destroyed. We do not here think of the supply as built up from nothing to its present size bit by bit, but look at it as it stands and measure the importance of any particular quantity. When we speak of final utility, we think of a series of "increments" supplied one after another, and in this case the successive increments become less and less important, since, after some have been supplied, the want of the kind of good that they represent is less keenly felt. The conception of the series of units is merely a means of isolating one unit from a total number and obtaining a mental measurement of its importance which corresponds with the effective importance of any unit in the entire quantity.
[3] The term create is here used in a somewhat loose sense and does not imply that the man originates matter or even that he always transforms it without calling in, as an aid, the forces of nature. The farmer must depend on vital forces in soil and air in order to raise a crop. What he and other laborers do is to cause the product in some way to come into existence, and he and they may in this sense be said to create the products which would not appear without them.
[4] The distinction between elementary utility and others does not need to be applied with the utmost strictness, for mining creates form utility by breaking up masses of ore, and place utility by making them accessible. Agriculture shapes its products and moves them to places of storage. It is convenient in practice to adhere to the more general classification suggested in the text.
[5] In a way all kinds of production may be analyzed into the moving of matter. In cutting up raw materials a manufacturer moves waste portions away from those that are to be utilized, while combining materials, of course, moves them toward each other. Neither of these operations creates place utility. This quality consists in a relation, not between some materials and others, but between goods and the persons who are to use them. Bringing things to us from a distance changes their local relation to us, and in this is the essence of place utility, and every article that we use must have acquired this quality. The service-rendering power which it possesses is only potential until it reaches a place where the power can be exercised.