Wealth is produced by human beings. It is the people of a country who produce the wealth of that country.
Wealth is produced by labour. Wealth cannot be produced by any other means or in any other way. All wealth is produced from the Land by human Labour.
A coal seam is not wealth; but a coalmine is wealth. Coal is not wealth while it is in the bowels of the earth; but coal is wealth as soon as it is brought up out of the pit and made available for use.
A whale or a seal is not wealth until it is caught.
In a country without inhabitants there would be no wealth.
Land is not wealth. To produce wealth you must have land and human beings.
There can be no wealth without labour.
And now we come to the first error of the economists. There are some economists who tell us that wealth is not produced by labour, but by "capital."
There is neither truth nor reason in this assertion.