PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 461 



is composed of about 12,988 bread-winners, representing 15.76 per 

 cent, of all human agents engaged in the production of consumable 

 wealth. The physical energy possessed by this sub-group is esti- 

 mated as equal to 1,082 horse-power, or only 1.11 per cent, of 

 total physical energy utilized in the work of production. Their 

 skilled services, however, entitle them to command £1,474,037 or 

 16.85 per cent, of the year's total production of consumable 

 wealth. 



(3) Unskilled labour. — Types : Farm hand, navvy, nurse, 

 scavenger, house-maid, seamstress, youthful apprentices, messengers, 

 (fee. This sub-group, in Tasmania, represent the largest number 

 of bread-winners, numbering 62,144, or as much as 75.38 per cent, 

 of all human agents currently engaged in the production of con- 

 sumable wealth. They, however, while only possessing 5.32 per 

 cent, of the total physical energy engaged, absorb, as their reward 

 for services rendered, consumable wealth of the value of about 

 £3,799,792, representing as much as 43.43 per cent, of the total 

 amount of consumable wealth produced by all human agents, and 

 by their powerful auxiliary instruments, and trained forces, en- 

 gaged in the work of production. This demonstrates, unmistak- 

 ably, that it is the human intelligence of the bread-winner, and, 

 especially, the consumption of his labour, time, and capital, which 

 are the main factors in determining the economic share of reward 

 for effective services rendered in the necessary work of production 

 of man's necessary wants and satisfactions. 



(b) Services of Man's Auxiliary Productive Instruments and 

 Energy Machines. 



(All such auxiliaries themselves" derived from the creations of 

 the anterior skill and labour of man.) 



1. Products of anterior labour in the shape of shelter, or right 

 of habitation, furniture, products of food, clothing, money, &c., 

 the products of anterior labour, on hand, the result of previous 

 savings.! 



1. Although the life anJ. i^mrgy of inan, like all other natural elementary or primary forces 

 are, from an economist's point of view, regarded in the initial stages as devoid of economic price 

 or value : yet, like all other elementary substances or forcfs, as soon as the cost of man's labour 

 is incorporatPd in man (regarded as an economic instrument of production), it becomes an element 

 of economic pile- or value. 



The existing 82,441 breadwinners of Tasmania regarded from an economist's point of view, 

 as the most important, as wuU as the most costly partof the econoinist's instruments of production, 

 both prohice, and expend upon theiiaelves and their dependants, about £7,250,000 sterling per 

 year. Regarded as an interminable annuity, at 4 per cent., it represents a present capital value 

 of £179,906.075. 



But this capital value cannot altogether be set down to the credit of the existing breadwinners 

 for the following important reasons : — ■ 



In the dependent stc.g" — from birth to the age of the independent or breadwinner — say on 

 the average at least a period of flft en years, anterior-labour services of parents or natural guardians 

 were expended upon the young future lireadwinnTs, in the form of protection, shelter, food, 

 clothing, education. &p., which for a period of fifteen years, say at £18 per annum at 4 per cent, 

 interest, would accumulate to a sum of £360 as an .lament of capital value, which, logically, must 

 be assumed as bi ing incorporated in the existing 82,441 Tasmanian breadwinners regarded in 

 the light of economic productive instruments. In the aggregate this amounts to £29,678,760 of 

 present capital value now incorporated in the breadwinner economic instruments of production, 

 which, logiCilly, must be credited to " The Anterior-labour Service of Man." 



