128 PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION F. 
means of the higher education of the people can ever alter the 
relative numbers of the various branches of human service ; and 
should it be thought possible that the education of the masses 
exerts any influence in the nature of its training in disturbing 
the necessary proportions of each great group of services upon 
which our lives and our civilisation depends, it would certainly 
prove that the general spread of higher education was a curse and 
not a blessing. 
Services would never become a marketable commodity of value 
in exchange if it were not for wants. Kinds of services, 
therefore, must be exactly proportionate to kinds of wants. The 
wants which demand the expenditure of the greater amount of 
labour must necessarily absorb the greater amount of persons 
requiring employment, without regard to their capacities, attain- 
ments, or personal desires; and, so far as the mass of human 
beings are concerned, there is no choice. 
The great wants—food, clothing, and shelter—are by far the 
greatest factors in the determination of the aggregate numbers 
that must be employed if the wants are to be satisfied. The 
same three great wants also determine the necessary amount and 
proportions of capital, machinery, and land to be employed, 
together with the necessary proportion of labourers for each 
kind of occupation which, directly or indirectly, is somehow 
utilised in the production of the said three great wants. 
It is true the strict average proportions of the various classes 
of labour machinery may not be found to be quite the same in 
each country; but this does not affect the aggregate of all 
countries. It is not absolutely necessary that the manufactures 
and agricultural industries of any one country should preserve 
the world’s strict average proportions to each other, so far as 
that. one country is concerned, so long as it is free to make 
necessary exchanges with other countries for disposing or making 
good their respective local surpluses and deficiencies. Never- 
theless, countries confined to the production of satisfactions for 
their own wants, or, what is the same, the world as a whole, must 
preserve the strict average proportion and quantity of labour and 
machinery in the production of satisfactions for those three great 
wants which are the mainsprings of all human activities and 
efforts. It is necessary, therefore, to make a very wide net to 
obtain approximate information with respect to the amount and 
due proportions of all kinds of services employed in the production 
of the whole round of wants of each country. It is unfortunate 
that figures relating to the occupations of all countries are not 
accessible; but reference to the ascertained occupations of 
Australasia, United States of America, British India, and seven 
principal States of Europe, embracing 433 millions of people, 
and representing all climes and all forms of industry, afford a 
basis wide enough to secure fairly accurate information. 
