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The Nature of the National Wealth: first, of the National Capital; second, of the National Income. Neither of these is susceptible of Arbitrary Division.

◆1 A legislative division of the national income is not only disappointing in its theoretical results, but practically impossible,

◆¹ We have just seen how disappointing, to those even who would gain most by it, would be the results of an equal division of the national income of this country, and how intolerable to all would be the general conditions involved in it. In doing this, we have of course adopted, for argument’s sake, an assumption which underlies all popular ideas of such a process; namely, that if a Government were only strong enough and possessed the requisite will, it could deal with the national income in any way that might be desired; or, in other words, that the national income is something that could be divided and distributed, as an enormous heap of sovereigns could, according to the will of any one who had them under his fingers. I am now going to show that this assumption is entirely false, and that even were it desirable theoretically that the national income should be redivided, it is not susceptible of any such arbitrary division.

◆1 As will be shown in this chapter.

◆¹ To those who are unaccustomed to reflecting on economic problems, and who more or less consciously associate the qualities of wealth with those of the money in whose terms its amount is stated, I cannot introduce this important subject better than by calling their attention to the few following facts, which, simple and accessible as they are, are not generally known.

◆1 Wealth is utterly unlike money in its divisible qualities.

◆2 The money of the United Kingdom is an imperceptible fraction of its wealth.

◆¹ The capital value of the wealth of the United Kingdom is estimated at something like ten thousand million pounds; but the entire amount of sovereigns and shillings in the country does not exceed a hundred and forty-four million pounds, nor that of the uncoined bullion, a hundred and twenty-two million pounds. That is to say, for every nominal ten thousand sovereigns there does not exist in reality more than two hundred and twenty-six. Were this sum divided amongst the population equally, it would give every one a share of exactly seven pounds. Again, this country produces every year wealth which we express by calling it thirteen hundred million pounds. ◆² The amount of gold and silver produced annually by the whole world is hardly so much as thirty-eight million pounds. If the whole of this were appropriated by the United Kingdom, it would give annually to each inhabitant only ten new shillings and a single new half-sovereign. The United Kingdom, however, gets annually but a tenth of the world’s money, so its annual share in reality is not so much as four million pounds. Accordingly, that vast volume of wealth which we express by calling it thirteen hundred million pounds, has but four million pounds of fresh money year by year to correspond to it. That is to say, there is only one new sovereign for every new nominal sum of three hundred and twenty-five.

◆1 The nature of wealth, as a whole, is quite misconceived by most people;

◆2 As we see by the metaphors they use to describe it.

◆¹ Wealth as a whole, therefore, is something so totally distinct from money that there is no ground for presuming it to be divisible in the same way. What is wealth, then, in a country like our own? To some people this will seem a superfluous question. They will say that every one knows what wealth is by experience—by the experience of possessing it, or by the experience of wanting it. And in a certain sense this is true, but not in any sense that concerns us here. In precisely the same sense every one knows what health is; but that is very different from knowing on what health depends; and to know the effects of wealth on our own existence is very different from knowing the nature of the thing that causes them. Indeed, as a matter of fact, what wealth really consists of is a thing which very few people are ever at the trouble to realise; and nothing shows that such is the case more clearly than the false and misleading images which are commonly used to represent it. ◆² The most familiar of these are: “a treasure,” “a store,” “a hoard,” or, as the Americans say, “a pile.” Now any one of these images is not only not literally true, but embodies and expresses a mischievous and misleading falsehood. It represents wealth as something which could be carried off and divided—as a kind of plunder which might be seized by a conquering army. But the truth is, that the amount of existing wealth which can be accurately described, or could be possibly treated in this way, is, in a country like ours, a very insignificant portion; and, were social conditions revolutionised to any serious degree, much of that portion would lose its value and cease to be wealth at all.

◆1 Many kinds of wealth that are considered typical would become almost valueless if divided: for instance, a great house and its contents.

◆¹ Let us take, for instance, some palatial house in London, which catches the public gaze as a monument of wealth and splendour; and we will suppose that a mob of five hundred people are incited to plunder it by a leader who informs them that its contents are worth two hundred thousand pounds. Assuming that estimate to be correct, would it mean that of these five hundred people each would get a portion to him worth four hundred pounds? Let us see what would really happen. They would find enough wine, perhaps, to keep them all drunk for a week; enough food to feed thirty of them for a day; and sheets and blankets for possibly thirty beds. But this would not account for many thousands out of the two hundred thousand pounds. The bulk of that sum would be made up—how? A hundred thousand pounds would be probably represented by some hundred and fifty pictures, and the rest by rare furniture, china, and works of art. Now all these things to the pillagers would be absolutely devoid of value; for if such pillage were general there would be nobody left to buy them; and they would in themselves give the pillagers no pleasure. One can imagine the feelings of a man who, expecting four hundred pounds, found himself presented with an unsaleable Sèvres broth-basin, or a picture of a Dutch burgomaster; or of five such men if for their share they were given a buhl cabinet between them. We may be quite certain that the broth-basin would be at once broken in anger; the cabinet would be tossed up for, and probably used as a rabbit-hutch; and the men as a body would endeavour to make up for their disappointment by ducking or lynching the leader who had managed to make such fools of them.

◆1 Wealth, as a whole, even less susceptible of division.

◆¹ And now let us consider the wealth of the kingdom as a whole. Much as the bulk of it differs from the contents of a house of this kind, it would, if seized on in any forcible way, prove even more disappointing and elusive.

◆1 Wealth, as a whole, has two aspects: that of capital, and that of income.

◆2 We will first consider the national capital.

◆¹ We may consider it under two aspects. We may consider it as so much annual income, or else as so much capital. In the last chapter we were considering it as so much income, and presently we shall be doing so again. But as capital may possibly strike the imagination of many as something more tangible and easily seized, and likely to yield, if redistributed, more satisfactory results, ◆² we will see first of what items the estimated capital of this country is composed. To do so will not only be instructive: it will also be curious and amusing.

◆1 This capital consists not of money;

◆¹ As I said just now, its value, expressed in money, is according to the latest authorities about ten thousand million pounds.[14] As actual money, however, forms so minute a portion of this,—the reader will see that it is hardly more than one-fortieth,—we may, for our present purpose, pass it entirely over; and our concern will be solely with the things for which our millions are a mere expression.

◆1 But of three classes of things: the two first comprising things not susceptible of division;

◆¹ It will be found that these things divide themselves into three classes. The first consists of things which, from their very nature, are not susceptible of any forcible division at all; the second consists of things which are susceptible of division only by a process of physically destroying them and pulling them into pieces; and each of these two classes, in point of value, represents, roughly speaking, nearly a quarter of the total. The third class alone, which represents little more than a half, consists of things which, even theoretically, could be divided without being destroyed.

◆1 The third class comprising all those things that could be divided without destroying them; and forming about half of the total.

◆¹ We will consider this third class first, which represents in the estimates of statisticians five thousand seven hundred million pounds. The principal things comprised in it are land, houses, furniture, works of art, clothing, merchandise, provisions, and live-stock; and such commodities in general as change hands over the shopman’s counter, or in the market.[15] Of these items, by far the largest is houses, which make up a quarter of the capital value of the country, or two thousand five hundred million pounds. But more than half this sum stands for houses which are much above the average in size, and which do not form more than an eighth part of the whole; and were they apportioned to a new class of occupants, they would lose at least three-fourths of their present estimated value. So too with regard to furniture and works of art, a large part of their estimated value would, as we have seen already, disappear in distribution likewise: and their estimated value is about a tenth of the whole we are now considering. Land, of course, can, at all events in theory, be divided with far greater advantage; and counts in the estimates as fifteen hundred million pounds—or something under a sixth of the whole. Merchandise, provisions, and movable goods in general can be divided yet more readily; and so one would think could live-stock, though this is hardly so in reality: but of the whole these three last items form little more than a twentieth.

◆1 The results of dividing these would be ridiculous.

◆¹ And now, supposing all these divisible things to be divided, let us see what the capital would look like which would be allotted to each individual. Each individual would find himself possessed of a lodging of some sort, together with clothes and furniture worth about eight pounds. He would have about eight pounds’ worth of provisions and miscellaneous movables, and a ring, a pin, or a brooch, worth about three pounds ten shillings. He would also be the proprietor of one acre of land, which would necessarily in many cases be miles away from his dwelling, whilst as to stocking his acre, he would be met by the following difficulty. He would find himself entitled to the twentieth part of a horse, to two-thirds of a sheep, the fourth part of a cow, and the tenth part of a pig.

◆1 The second class of things, comprising the national capital, could not be divided without destroying them.

◆2 The remaining class of things could not be divided at all.

◆¹ Such then would be the result to the individual of dividing the whole of our capital that could be divided without destroying it. This is, as we said, a little more than half of the total; and now let us turn to the two other quarters; beginning with the things which could be indeed divided, but which would obviously be destroyed in the process. Their estimated value is more than two thousand million pounds: half of which sum is represented by the railways and shipping of the kingdom; six hundred million pounds, by gasworks and the machinery in our factories; and the rest, by roads and streets and public works and buildings. ◆² These, it is obvious, are not suitable for division; and still less divisible are the things in the class that still remains. For of their total value, which amounts to some two thousand five hundred million pounds, more than a thousand million pounds, according to Mr. Giffen, represent the good-will of various professions of business; and the whole of the remainder—nearly fifteen hundred million pounds—represents nothing that is in the United Kingdom at all, but merely legal claims on the part of particular British subjects to a share in the proceeds of enterprise in other countries.

This last class consists of things which are merely rights and advantages secured by law, and dependent on existing social conditions; and it can be easily understood how they would disappear under any attempt to seize them. But the remaining three quarters of our capital consists of material things; and what we have seen with regard to them may strike many people as incredible; for the moment we imagine them violently seized and distributed, they seem to dwindle and shrivel up; and the share of each individual suggests to one’s mind nothing but a series of ludicrous pictures—pictures of men whose heritage in all this unimaginable wealth is an acre of ground, two wheels of a steam-engine, a bedroom, a pearl pin, and the tenth part of a pig.

◆1 Capital has no value at all, except when vivified by use;

◆¹ The explanation, however, of this result is to be found in the recognition of an exceedingly simple fact: that the capital of a country is of hardly any value at all, and is, as capital, of no value at all, when regarded merely as an aggregate of material things, and not as material things made living by their connection with life. The land, which is worth fifteen hundred million pounds, depends for its value on the application of human labour to it, and the profitable application of labour depends on skill and intelligence. The value of the houses depends on our means of living in them—depends not on themselves, but on the way in which they are inhabited. What are railways or steamships, regarded as dead matter, or all the machinery belonging to all the manufacturing companies? Nothing. They are no more wealth than a decomposing corpse is a man. They become wealth only when life fills them with movement by a power which, like all vital processes, is one of infinite complexity: when multitudes are massed in this or in that spot, or diffused sparsely over this or that district; when trains move at appropriate seasons, and coal finds its way from the mine to the engine-furnace. The only parts of the capital in existence at any given moment, which deserve the name of capital as mere material things, are the stores of food, fuel, and clothing existing in granaries, shops, and elsewhere; and not only is the value of these proportionately small, but, if not renewed constantly, they would in a few weeks be exhausted.

◆1 And it obviously cannot be used if it is equally distributed.

◆2 Income is all that could conceivably be thus divided.

◆¹ It is plain then that, under the complicated system of production to which the wealth of the modern world is due, an equal division of the capital of a country like our own is not the way to secure an equal division of wealth. ◆² The only thing that could conceivably be divided is income. If, however, it is true that capital is, as we have seen it is, in its very nature living, and ceases to be itself the moment that life goes out of it, still more emphatically must the same thing be said of income, for the sake of producing which capital is alone accumulated. Agitators talk of the national income as if it were a dead tree which a statesman like Mr. Gladstone could cut into chips and distribute. It is not like a dead tree; it is like the living column of a fountain, of which every particle is in constant movement, and of which the substance is never for two minutes the same.

◆1 The national income consists of money no more than the national capital does.

◆2 It consists of other things, or rights to other things;

◆3 Namely, of perishable goods, durable goods, and services.

◆¹ Let us examine the details of this income, and the truth of what has been said will be apparent. The total amount, as we have seen, is estimated at thirteen hundred million pounds; it is not, however, made up of sovereigns, but of things of which sovereigns are nothing more than the measure. ◆² The true income of the nation and the true income of the individual consist alike of things which are actually consumed or enjoyed; or of legal rights to such things which are accumulated for future exercise. Of these last, which, in other words, are savings, and are estimated to amount to a hundred and thirty million pounds annually, we need not speak here, except to deduct them from the total spent. The total is thus reduced to eleven hundred and seventy million pounds—or to things actually consumed or enjoyed, which are valued at that figure. Now what are these things? That is our present question. ◆³ By far the larger part of them comes under the following heads: Food, Clothing, Lodging, Fuel and Lighting, the attendance of Servants, the Defence of the Country and Empire, and the Maintenance of Law and Order. These together represent about eight hundred million pounds. Of the remaining three hundred and seventy million pounds, about a third is represented by the transport of goods and travelling; and not much more than a quarter of the total income, or about two hundred and seventy million pounds, by new furniture, pictures, books, plate, and other miscellaneous articles. The furniture produced annually counts for something like forty million pounds; and the new plate for not more than five hundred thousand pounds.

And now let us examine these things from certain different points of view, and see how in each case they group themselves into different classes.

In the first place, they may be classified thus: into things that are wealth because they are consumed, things that are wealth because they are owned, and things that are wealth because they are used or occupied. Under the first heading come food, clothing, lighting, and fuel; under the second, movable chattels; and under the third, the occupation of houses,[16] the services of domestics, the carrying of letters by the Post Office, transport and travelling, and the defences and administration of the country. In other words, the first class consists of new perishable goods, the second of new durable goods, and the third not of goods at all, but of services and uses. The relative amounts of value of the three will be shown with sufficient accuracy by the following rough estimates.

Of a total of eleven hundred and seventy million pounds, perishable goods count for five hundred and twenty million pounds, durable goods and chattels for two hundred and fifty million pounds, and services and uses for four hundred million pounds. Thus, less than a quarter of what we call the national income consists of material things which we can keep and collect about us; little less than half consists of material things which are only produced to perish, and perish almost as fast as they are made; and more than a third consists of actions and services which are not material at all, and pass away and renew themselves even faster than food and fuel.

◆1 A large part of the national income consists of things that are imported.

◆2 Most of our food is imported.

◆¹ This is how the national income appears, as seen from one point of view. Let us change our ground, and see how it appears to us from another. We shall see the uses and the services—to the value of four hundred million pounds—still grouped apart as before. But the remaining elements, representing nearly eight hundred million pounds, and consisting of durable and perishable material things, we shall see dividing itself in an entirely new way—into material things made at home, and material things imported. We shall see that the imported things come to very nearly half;[17] and we shall see further that amongst these imported things food forms incomparably the largest item. But the significance of this fact is not fully apparent till we consider what is the total amount of food consumed by us; and when we do that, we shall see that, exclusive of alcoholic drinks, actually more than half come to us from other countries.[18] The reader perhaps may think that this imported portion consists largely of luxuries, which, on occasion, we could do without. If he does think so, let him confine his attention to those articles which are most necessary, and most universally consumed—namely bread, meat, tea, coffee, and sugar—◆² and he will see that our imports are to our home produce as ninety to seventy-three. If we strike out the last three, our position is still more startling;[19] and most startling if we confine ourselves to the prime necessary—bread. The imported wheat is to the home-grown wheat as twenty-six to twelve: that is to say, of the population of this kingdom twenty-six millions subsist on wheat that is imported, and only twelve millions on wheat that is grown at home; or, to put the matter in a slightly different way, we all subsist on imported wheat for eight months of the year.

◆1 Thus the national income is a product of infinite complexity.

◆¹ And now let the reader reflect on what all this means. It means that of the material part of the national income half consists, not of goods which we ourselves produce, but of foreign goods which are exchanged for them; and are exchanged for them only because, by means of the most far-reaching knowledge, and the most delicate adaptation of skill, we are able to produce goods fitted to the wants and tastes of distant nations and communities, many of which are to most of us hardly even known by name. On every workman’s breakfast-table is a meeting of all the continents and of all the zones; and they are united there by a thousand processes that never pause for a moment, and thoughts and energies that never for a moment sleep.

◆1 Its amount also varies owing to infinitely complicated causes,

◆¹ A consideration of these facts will be enough to bring home to anybody the accuracy of the simile of which I made use just now, when I compared the income of the nation to the column thrown up by a fountain. He will see how, like such a column, it is a constant stream of particles, taking its motion from a variety of complicated forces, and how it is a phenomenon of force quite as much as a phenomenon of matter. He will see that it is a living thing, not a dead thing: and that it can no more be distributed by any mechanical division of it, than the labour of a man can be distributed by cutting his limbs to pieces.

This simile of the fountain, though accurate, is, like most similes, incomplete. It will, however, serve to introduce us to one peculiarity more by which our national income is distinguished, and which has an even greater significance than any we have yet dealt with.

In figuring the national income as the water thrown up by a fountain, we of course suppose its estimated amount or value to be represented by the volume of the water and the height to which it is thrown. What I am anxious now to impress on the attention of the reader is that the height and volume of our national fountain of riches are never quite the same from one year to another; whilst we need not extend our view beyond the limits of one generation to see that they have varied in the most astonishing manner. The height and volume of the fountain are now very nearly double what they were when Mr. Gladstone was in Lord Aberdeen’s Ministry.[20]

◆1 Which are quite independent of the growth of population;

◆¹ Some readers will perhaps be tempted to say that in this there is nothing wonderful, for it is due to the increase of population. But the increase of population has nothing to do with the matter. It cannot have anything to do with what I am now stating. For when I say that within a certain period the income of the nation has doubled itself, I mean that it has doubled itself in proportion to the population; so that, no matter how many more millions of people there may be in the country now than there were at the beginning of the period in question, there is annually produced for each million of people now nearly twice the income that was produced for each million of people then. Or in other words, an equal division now would give each man nearly double the amount that it would have given him when Mr. Gladstone was beginning to be middle-aged.

◆1 As we may see by comparing the income of this country with the income of others.

◆¹ But we must not be content with comparing our national income with itself. Let us compare it also with the incomes of other countries; and let it in all cases be understood that the comparison is between the income as related to the respective populations, and not between the absolute totals. We will begin with France. It is estimated that, within the last hundred and ten years, the income of France has, relatively to the population, increased more than fourfold. A division of the income in 1780 would have given six pounds a head to everybody: a similar division now would give everybody twenty-seven pounds. And yet the income of France, after all this rapid growth, is to-day twenty-one per cent less than that of the United Kingdom. Other comparisons we shall find even more striking. Relatively to the respective populations, the income of the United Kingdom exceeds that of Norway in the proportion of thirty-four to twenty; that of Switzerland, in the proportion of thirty-four to nineteen; that of Italy, in the proportion of thirty-four to twelve; and that of Russia, in the proportion of thirty-four to eleven. The comparison with Italy and Russia brings to light a remarkable fact. Were all the property of the upper classes in those countries confiscated, and the entire incomes distributed in equal shares, the share of each Russian would be fifty per cent less, and of each Italian forty per cent less than what each inhabitant of the United Kingdom would receive from a division of the income of its wage-earning classes only.

We find, therefore, that if we take equal populations of men,—populations, let us say, of a million men each,—either belonging to the same nation at different dates, or to different civilised nations at the same date, that the incomes produced by no two of them reach to the same amount; but that, on the contrary, the differences between the largest income and the others range from twenty to two hundred per cent.

◆1 The causes of these differences in income are not differences of race,

◆¹ Now what is the reason of this? Perhaps it will be said that differences of race are the reason. That may explain a little, but it will not explain much; for these differences between the incomes produced by equal bodies of men are not observable only when men are of different races; but the most striking examples,—namely, those afforded by our own country and France—are differences between the incomes produced by the same race during different decades—by the same race, and by many of the same individuals.

◆1 Nor of soil or climate,

◆¹ Perhaps then it will be said that they are due to differences of soil and climate. But again, that will not explain the differences, at various dates, between the incomes of the same countries; and though it may explain a little, it will not explain much, of the differences at the same date between the incomes of different countries. The soil and climate, for instance, of the United Kingdom, are not in themselves more suited for agriculture than the soil and climate of France and Belgium; and yet for each individual actually engaged in agriculture, this country produces in value twenty-five per cent more than France, and forty per cent more than Belgium. I may add that it produces forty-six per cent more than Germany, sixty-six per cent more than Austria, and sixty per cent more than Italy.[21]

◆1 Nor of hours of labour,

◆¹ Perhaps then a third explanation will be suggested. These differences will be said to be due to differences in the hours of labour. But a moment’s consideration will show that that has nothing to do with the problem; for when a million people in this country produced half what they produce to-day, they had fewer holidays, and they worked longer hours. Now that they have doubled the annual produce, they take practically four weeks less in producing it.[22] Again, the hours of labour for the manufacturing classes are in Switzerland twenty-six per cent longer at the present time than in this country; and yet the annual product, in proportion to the number of operatives, is twenty-eight per cent less.[23]

Agriculture gives us examples of the same discrepancy between the labour expended and the value of the result obtained. In France, the agricultural population is three times what it is in this country, but the value of the agricultural produce is not so much as double.[24]

◆1 But are causes of some other kind which lie below the surface,

Plainly, therefore, the growth of a nation’s income, under modern conditions, does not depend on an increased expenditure of labour. There might, indeed, seem some ground for leaping to the contrary conclusion—that it grows in proportion as the hours of labour are limited: but whatever incidental truth there may be in that contention, it does not explain the main facts we are dealing with; for some of the most rapid changes in the incomes of nations we find have occurred during periods when the hours of labour remained unaltered; and we find at the present moment that countries in which the hours of labour are the same, differ even more, in point of income, from one another than they differ from countries in which the hours of labour are different. ◆¹ Whatever, therefore, the causes of such differences may be, they are not simple and superficial causes like these.

◆1 And which requires to be carefully searched for.

I have alluded to the incomes of foreign countries only for the sake of throwing more light on the income of our own. Let us again turn to that. Half of that income, as we have seen, consists to-day of an annual product new since the time when men still in their prime were children; and this mysterious addition to our wealth has rapidly and silently developed itself, without one person in a thousand being aware of its extent, or realising the operation of any new forces that might account for it. Let people of middle age look back to their own childhood; and the England of that time, in aspects and modes of life, will not seem to them very different from what it seems now. Let them turn over a book of John Leech’s sketches, which appeared in Punch about the time of the first Exhibition; and, putting aside a few changes in feminine fashion, they will see a faithful representation of the life that still surrounds them. The street, the drawing-room, the hunting-field, the railway-station—nothing will be obsolete, nothing out-of-date. Nothing will suggest that since these sketches were made any perceptible change has come over the conditions of our civilisation. And yet, somehow or other, some changes have taken place, owing to which our income has nearly doubled itself. ◆¹ In other words, the existence of one-half of our wealth is due to causes, the nature, the presence, and the operation of which, are hidden so completely beneath the surface of life as to escape altogether the eye of ordinary observation, and reveal themselves only to careful and deliberate search.

◆1 For, unless we understand the causes which have made our national income grow, we may, by interfering with them unknowingly, make our income decrease:

◆¹ The practical moral of all this is obvious: that just as our income has doubled itself without our being aware of the causes, and almost without our being aware of the fact, so unless we learn what the causes are, and are consequently able to secure for them fair play, or, at all events, to avoid interfering with their operation, we may lose what we have gained even more quickly than we have gained it, and annihilate the larger part of what we are desirous to distribute. We have seen that the national income is a living thing; and, as is the case with other living things, the principles of its growth reside in parts of the body which are themselves not sensitive to pain, but which may for the moment be deranged and injured with impunity, and will betray their injury only by results which arise afterwards, and which may not be perceived till it is too late to remedy them.

◆1 And this is the danger of reckless social legislation.

◆¹ Here lies the danger of reckless social legislation, and even of the reckless formation of vague public opinion; for public opinion, in a democratic country like ours, is legislation in its nebular stage: and hence the only way to avert this danger is, first to do what we have just now been doing,—to consider the amount and character of the wealth with which we have to deal,—and secondly, to examine the causes to which the production of this wealth has been due, and on which the maintenance of its continued production must depend.

◆1 We will therefore, in the following Book, examine what these causes are.

◆¹ Let the social reformer lay the following reflections to his heart. Some of the more ardent and hopeful of the leaders of the Labour Party to-day imagine that considerable changes in the distribution of the national income may be brought about by the close of the present century. In other words, they prophesy that the Government will seven years hence do certain things with that year’s national income. But the national income of that year is not yet in existence; and what grounds have those sanguine persons for thinking that when it is produced it will be as large, or even half as large, as the national income is to-day? What grounds have they for believing that, if the working-classes then take everything, they will be as rich as they are now when they take only a part? The only ground on which such a belief can be justified is the implied belief that the same conditions and forces which have swelled the national income to its present vast amount, will still continue in undisturbed operation.

We will now proceed to consider what these conditions and forces are.