LABOUR AND WEALTH. 601 



admission that the mere exertion of labor is not essentially 

 a productive process. A larger amount of labor may be 

 expended in cultivating a poor piece of land than in tilling a 

 rich piece of soil; but the results in wealth will not be pro- 

 portionate to the labor expended, but to the favorable con- 

 ditions under which the labor is applied. 



What position, then, does labor really occupy in relation 

 to the production of wealth ? 



I have already pointed out that, to be profitable to man- 

 kind, labor must be thought in action ; and the truth yet 

 remains to be fully realised that physical exertion, fo be 

 profitable, need not necessarily be any more thought in action 

 than the working of a steam-engine or the beat of paddle- 

 wheels overcoming the resistance of opposing waters. 



And this brings me to the all-important point of my paper, 

 that back of muscular effort (whit-h in itself is merely ^can 

 expenditure and consumption of the potentialities of fuel 

 supplied in the form of food), intelligence, which can alone 

 grasp the meaning of Nature's riddles, must map out the 

 one course to be taken if the end aimed at is to be attained. 



Labor, then, must be conducted inteUigently, and not at 

 haphazard, if the forces of Nature are to be turued to profit- 

 able account. Thought mnst work out the problem, and 

 muscular effort, by depositing certain materials in one place 

 rather than in another, myy become a factor in the augumen- 

 tation of the potential energy that it is the object and in- 

 tention of thought to conserve for the sustenance of life and 

 the purposes of civilisation. 



To this extent, and only so far, may labor (the class of 

 labor I have referred to as the labor of the hands) lay claim 

 to a share in the production of wealth. 



The problem of the future is how to render large supplies 

 of potential energy available for the sustenance of life and 

 the progress of the human race. 



This problem cannot be solved by endeavours to persuade 

 the ignorant and credulous that by the exertion and appli- 

 cation of mere brute force they are the creators of wealth, 

 and that they above all others possess the creative power 

 that belongs alone to the all-sustaining influence of which 

 all forms of energy are but the expression and manifestation. 



