462 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 



2. More or less fixed auxiliary instruments and forces neces- 

 sarily engaged in supplementing man's own individual exertions in 

 the production of consumable wealth. Types : Land improvements, 

 (a) mines machinery and costly equipment, railways, roads, tram- 

 ways, bridges, canals, harbors, houses, buildings, steam, electric, 

 gas, and oil engines, water-power, works, ships, lighthouses, &c. 



All such wonderful, labour-saving auxiliary producing agencies 

 certainly owe their origin, and present powerful harnessed physical 

 energy, to man's anterior inventive power, forethought, directing 

 skill, and effective industrial labour. Among the anterior services 

 of man involved in the creation of these increasing labour-saving 

 powerful auxiliaries, it is particularly necessary to note, that all 

 such anterior services,* of invention, and forethought, would, of 

 themselves, fail to bring from an abstract idea to a concrete 

 reality all presently invaluable auxiliaries, were it not for the pro- 

 vidence and present sacrifice of some, in saving from their current 

 individual consumption a portion of their customary comforts and 

 luxuries, and thus enabling them to divert some of the now liber- 

 ated or available productive agencies, to the construction or manu- 

 facture of those powerful instrumental auxiliaries, which, at the 

 present day, of themselves, perform nearly 92 per cent, of all the 

 purely physical energy required to supply the whole of man's 

 material wants and satisfactions. 



Although these auxiliaries provide as much as 92 per cent, of 

 the necessary physical force now required to supply man's wants, 

 their economic value (only absorbing 15.17 per cent., or there- 

 about, of the total consumable wealth produced) enable human- 

 labour agencies (who at most only possess 7 per cent, of the total 

 physical productive energy required) to secure and appropriate 

 as much as 82.24 per cent, of the consumable wealth produced by 

 all the producing agencies — human and auxiliary. ^ 



2. With all dus respect to those holding a different opinion, I hold that land, per te, being a free 

 gift of nature has, in the natural stage, no economic value whatever. It, of course, possesses 

 utility, but, lilie all other natural elemental substances, per ge, such as gold, silver, or coal, it is 

 devoid entirely of economic price or value, until such time as some useful human service happens 

 to be incorporated with it. 



The first element of economical value incorporated in the natural state of land is created by 

 the human services rendered by a stable Government in securing to a ■'elector, for ar equivalent 

 exchange value, a title to the sole right of ownership of the land deemed to be capable 

 of yielding a profitable return to effective labour engaged thereon. Additional value is given 

 to it by the Government, through its executive officers, in securing to the owner the fruits of his 

 own labour when it is produced. Repeated doses of capital value, directly or indirectly due to 

 man's labour, accrues to the ground, by every work of economic utility, whether carried out 

 directly by means of private enterprise, "or indirectly by Government labour, in connecting such 

 land with seaboard harbors and marketable centres for products, by the constniction, main- 

 tenance, and repairs to public roads, railways, bridges, harbors, jetties, schools, building, postal 

 and telegraphic communication, and such like value-giving advantages. Upon this overlapping 

 of the elements of accrued value, the owner, by his own capital, organizing, and directing skill, 

 conjoined with the services of paid contractors and servants, may from time to time add stil! 

 greater economic value to the same land by the erection of the necessary buildings, fences, 

 drainage, fertilizers, and other costly improvements. In niv opinion, therefore, it is incon- 

 trovertible that man's incorporated labour services alon", directly or indirectly, are the means by 

 which unimproved virgin land, or any other elemental snhstanc:'R, come, per s« to possess any 

 degree of what is termed economic price or value. This view of course is quite apart from, and 

 does not touch, the much-vexed question, as to the rights of possession of what is usually but 

 erroneously termed " the unearned increment." 



