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PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 873 
SECTION G,. 
ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURE. 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
By R. M. Jounsron, F.L.S., F.S.S., Government Statist of 
Tasmania. 
(Delivered Friday, January 7, 1898.) 
CONSUMABLE WEALTH. 
THe term “wealth” is the principal source of confusion in all 
social and economic questions. The manner in which the term 
should be used or interpreted depends entirely upon the nature 
of the question with which the generic word “ wealth” is brought 
into relationship or conjunction. Owing to the backward state 
of Economic Science, as compared with the various branches of 
Natural Science, the phrase “the wealth of a country ” covers 
widely divergent conceptions. 
Even if we exclude the free or unmonopolised gifts of Nature, 
which form no element of “exchange value,” there are still at 
least three different conceptions of the phrase, “the wealth of 
a country,” the lack of a precise grasp of which is the rock upon 
which nearly all so called socialists become wrecked in confusion 
and absurdity. 
(1) The Statistician’s “wealth of a country ” may mean, either 
private wealth or public wealth, or both; but in any case, it 
rarely embraces more than one-third of the real monetary value 
of the total wealth in exchange of the economist ; and certainly 
seldom more than 2 or 3 per cent. of the corresponding monetary 
or exchange value of the total capital value of the true wealth in 
exchange of the economist. 
It altogether excludes the principal primary source of all wealth 
in exchange, viz :—The existing productive personal services of 
man, although the annual monetary value of the latter is fully 
three times as great. For example, in Tasmania the annual value 
