PRESIDENTS ADDRESS. 875 
They are confined strictly to those articles of wealth which are 
fixed or set apart from consumption as instruments for the pro- 
duction, transfer, modification, or protection of the current year’s 
consumable goods and satisfactions for man himself; and also 
for the current year’s supply of consumable goods, required as 
food, renewals, repairs, and shelter by man’s instruments, whether 
animate—as horses, cattle, sheep—or inanimate—as in the coal, 
oil, materials required for the production of energy in his engines 
and machinery, engaged constantly in the production, transfer, 
or modification of the essential utilities of man’s life—viz., food, 
transport, shelter, warmth, clothing, comforts, luxuries, ease. 
Moreover, the Statistician gives the capital value of these 
instruments ; and therefore no just comparison between this per- 
sonally non-consumable part of a nation’s wealth can be made, 
until the several parts of the total wealth is stated in a corres- 
ponding measure of monetary or exchange value. 
For if we capitalise the value of fixed instruments, we should 
also for comparison capitalise the annual production of wealth— 
also annually :— 
(1) Distributed and consumed; or (2) annually converted 
into fresh fixed auxiliary producing, transporting, 
modifying, or protecting instruments. 
Thus, although the capital value of fixed instruments in New 
South Wales, is estimated at 412 millions, it only represents 30°19 
per cent. of the corresponding capital value of its annual produc- 
tions of fresh wealth of consumption ; for although the annual 
value of the latter only represents 68°23 millions, its capital value 
represents a sum of 1,364°58 millions, or 5°31 times the value of 
the Statistician’s wealth of land, houses, machines, and other 
fixed forms of the mere producing agencies. 
Even while it is admitted that the element of national wealth 
contained in the fixed producing instruments (viz., 30 per cent.) 
may be confined to the ownership—not consumption—of a com- 
paratively small number of the community, this circumstance does 
not afford the slightest information as to the distribution of the 
fruits of the various producing agencies, among which man’s cur- 
rent directing as well as current muscular services play a prominent 
part ; and it must not be forgotten that the latter, together with 
the “anterior labour” and skill of man now currently stored or 
incorporated as detached claims in auxiliary producing instruments, 
constitute the main elements which give price or monetary value 
to the current wealth in exchange, produced, whether for con- 
sumption or for fixed uses of future production. 
From such obvious considerations we are able to detect the 
common fallacy among Socialistic writers and others, who 
invariably measure the distribution of the wealth created purposely 
