530 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



Consumption is the crown of production. Wliat else do 

 people produce goods for but to consume them ? The proper 

 aim of human labour is not the piling up of an imposing mass 

 of accumulations, but the satisfaction of human wants, and the 

 labourer's wants must be much better satisfied than they are 

 at present before he is likely to do much in the way of 

 piling up. 



I may sum up my position so far in these words : Given 

 industry and intelligence, under just laws, and wealth must 

 accumulate, no matter how reckless and improvident a people 

 mav be. (Of course, if they are not reckless and improvident 

 it may accumulate faster ; l3ut that is understood.) 



Suppose such a race, intelligent and industrious, living 

 under ordinarily favourable conditions, but so reckless as 

 to have absolutely no care for the morrow, each (being 

 industrious) earning as much as he can, but (being improvi- 

 dent) earning it only to spend it as fast as he gets it, — every 

 one living up to his income from day to day ; then wealth 

 would accumulate rapidly. For, as I have said, spending 

 money is one thing, consuming goods (in the sense of using 

 them up) is another. The vast majority of goods produced, 

 even of those required for immediate use, consist of articles 

 which, being more or less durable, are produced faster than 

 they are worn out, and so accumulate ; and transferring 

 goods from one person to another, or converting them from 

 one shape to another, is not destroying them, — is not " con- 

 suming capital." 



But, it may be said, so improvident a people as this, 

 though they might undesignedly accumulate vast possessions, 

 would always be in imminent danger of starvation. A bad 

 harvest, or any one of a thousand likely accidents, might cut 

 off their daily food supply, and, as no one had laid by for the 

 morrow, they must all die. 



Even if this were true, it would be quite beside the 

 question ; for the question is whether accumulations, such as 

 they are, are due to self-denying abstinence, not whether 

 these accumulations are always of the kind most necessary ; 

 and a man indisputably rich, gnd with all his riches around 

 him, may die, and often has died, of starvation, as in a 

 beleaguered city or shipwreck. 



But it is not true that such a people would be in any more 

 danger of starvation than we are. Foi* the division of labour 

 is one necessary consequence of energy and intelligence, and 

 with such a people, as with us, the production of food would 



