Wealth in material objects.—Our attention is called to wealth in comparing two material objects of desire. One has more uses, more important uses, more rare uses, than another; or one is less easily obtained than another. In either case we prize that one in store, as the more important. We compare two farms, as material aids to different owners, and call both wealth in different degrees. We note the condition of two countries as to all the machinery of industry, and know that one has greater wealth than the other. We compare the accumulations of this generation with those of our fathers, and rejoice in our advance in wealth as one important form of power to gain a genuine welfare. Thus, in comparing our country's inventory by the census of 1890 with that of 1850, we find that while its people are only 2.7 times as many, there are 3.15 times as many farms of exactly the same number of acres, though more of each is cultivated, and that the value of property used in farming is more than four times as great; so we know that the farmers have increased in wealth and welfare as compared with our fathers. See Charts I and II.

Rural wealth analyzed.—A brief analysis of rural wealth in any established community will help to understand the meaning of the word and its relation to welfare. First may be named the farm fields and plantations brought by exertions continued through long years from raw forest or prairie to present tilth and productiveness. An English farmer, when asked how long it took to establish a certain permanent pasture, replied, “Three hundred years.” Second, all fences, [pg 013] drives and farm buildings, for convenience of handling and storing produce and stock. Third, all the tools and implements of the trade. Fourth, all domestic animals of every kind, and all attendants of their sustenance and growth, including feed and manure. Fifth, all contrivances for marketing and preparing for market. Sixth, all highways between neighbors and toward market. Seventh, all local elevators, stock-yards and depot facilities. Eighth, the homes, with all material comforts and utensils. Ninth, any store of provisions in cellar, pantry, smokehouse or bin. Tenth, all personal belongings for clothing, adornment and enjoyment. Eleventh, the family libraries and associated treasures. Twelfth, any actual store of gold, silver or other current wealth available for future wants. This does not include notes, mortgages, bonds, or any other promises to pay, nor certificates of stock in any business enterprise, because these are mere titles to wealth supposed to exist elsewhere,—as distinct from the wealth as the deed is from the farm. Thirteenth, any peculiar advantages of location, scenery, pure air, pure water and agreeable temperature, that are controlled by owners for personal advantage or enjoyment, and can be objects of desire to others. Fourteenth, any “good will” attached to, and part of, particular farms, due to long established methods and facilities in preparing or marketing produce. If such “good will” is attached to a person rather than to the place, it is not wealth, but power.

The last two are seldom distinctly enumerated by the assessor, yet they are clearly estimated in any [pg 014] exchange of places or transfer of titles. They are owned, used and transferred like other forms of wealth, and save future exertions to obtain them. All these are wealth because they contribute to welfare through being accumulated materials to meet future wants, and are to be measured in any estimate by their relation to the wants they will satisfy and the exertions they will save.

Future wants certain.—Wants and exertions are readily seen to be at the foundation of all ideas of wealth as indicated above. If we are uncertain as to the continuance of any wants or uncertain as to the conditions for meeting those wants, we stop accumulation of materials for satisfying them. Exertion stops unless the satisfaction to be gained by our effort is foreseen with a reasonable certainty. The farmer is never absolutely sure of returns for his labor upon the cornfield; but he is reasonably certain, and is absolutely certain that the crop will not come without labor. This assumed continuance of individual wants and their relations gives the grand motive for wealth gathering.

The means of protection and support for physical life will be needed by ourselves and our children. Tools of better form and machinery of better manufacture will be needed to reduce exertion in future. Reduced exertion for a given satisfaction will mean a fuller supply of things we are going to need still. If these wants are fully met, we are going to have leisure to satisfy larger and higher wants. It is the certainty that each advance of wealth will bring advancing wants [pg 015] to consume more wealth, that gives a genuine motive to activity in gaining wealth, i.e., in accumulating the things to be used. The degree of uncertainty in all future plans leads to over-estimating the importance of gold, diamonds or any forms of wealth that can most easily be transferred between places or individuals, or be turned to account in each change of necessities.

Ownership.—The importance of wants and exertion emphasizes the importance of the individual self in all ideas of wealth. The ownership of one's own abilities and their products is absolutely essential to his care for accumulation, and that care is in proportion to his security in such ownership. Directly or indirectly, every exertion and every sacrifice must depend upon confidence that it will bring its object; but wealth-getting has no object without control, in some measure, of results. This fact makes individual ownership an essential to the highest exertion, a natural sequence to the right of liberty.

Property rights are grounded in the general and individual welfare, as shown in human nature and in the progress of the world along the line of protection to property. Those communities are most happy which best protect individual property. As J. E. Thorold Rogers remarks, “Sacredness is accorded to private property, because society prospers by it.” Even theorizers who denounce individual property-holding found their argument upon the equity of individual rights in property. War is less harmful than anarchy, because it ensures a measure of control. Slavery has sometimes been less injurious than war in giving security to [pg 016] enjoy a portion of self. But a conquest of freedom by bloodshed is worth its cost in self-control. Civilization advances as individual responsibility for property, as well as everything else, is recognized.

Christianity is ideally practical in upholding every man's right to self-control in the interest of all. It distinguishes equity from equality in distribution of all good, wealth included. Public property is rightly public when the wants and energies of all the community are best provided for by such common ownership. Proof in each particular case is essential against the presumption that individual needs are the best impulses to provision for welfare. Even common property is limited necessarily to the numbers who can use it. No property or wealth can exist for anybody without the control of some human individuals for whom it is accumulated.

Wants individual.—We are likely to lose sight of the essential individuality of wants and exertions which make wealth possible, because in any community exchange of services modifies the direct relation of each man's wants to his accumulations. Assuming that others, wanting food, will exchange clothing for it, one man stores food alone, but in quantities far beyond his own need, measuring its relation to all his material wants through the wants and exertions of others. He feels even more sure of the continued activity of wants and powers among a multitude than if he had but one neighbor; but individuals, after all, must need his products and exert themselves to meet the need, or all his calculations fail.