BY R. M. JOHNSTON, I.S.O. F.S.S. 105 



wants in all communities is determined by the nature of 

 the wants ; and invariably the greater intensity of the 

 struggle, beginning with the most essential, is in the follow- 

 ing order : — 



1. The satisfaction of wants essential to life, viz. — 



food, shelter, and rest. 



2. The satisfaction of wants essential to comfort. 



3. The satisfaction of luxurious wants. 



Man — whether millionaire as regards nominal claim 

 xipon capital wealth, or beggar without any nominal claim 

 — may exist without the enjoyment of luxurious satisfac- 

 "bions. He may be deprived of all satisfactions saving the 

 first group, and still maintain a more or less extended life 

 struggle with patient fortitude ; but if the satisfaction of 

 the primary- wants of the first group — food, shelter, and 

 rest^ — be ever so little curtailed below a certain minimum, 

 he, whether capitalist or pauper, will speedily perish 

 iniserably. 



Man lives by actual current or annual productions in- 

 tended for consumption alone — consumable wealth — 

 ^nd not upon fixed capital or animate or inanimate instru- 

 ments of production, or their nominal claim values, v/hether 

 annual or capital ; and when we discover that services cur- 

 rently rendered, whether by instrument, skilled mind, or 

 hand, constitute the base of what forms the real purchas- 

 ing power or claim over "consumable wealth" currently 

 available, we are able to more clearly perceive that tJie 

 distribution of that form of wealth which comprises the 

 immediately necessary products upon which subsistence 

 depends, is determined — not as fallaciously assumed by 

 the proportion of claim which each man holds of the Statis- 

 tician's wealth — i.e., the fixed non-personally consumable 

 instruments of production, which the nominal owner no 

 more consumes than the sei^-ants who control them, but 

 — strictly by the express measure which current ser\^ices of 

 various degrees of exchange value have enabled each worker 

 or useful service to constitute a claim upon the current 

 available aggregate products of such services whose values 

 are contained and incorporated in the current production 

 of consumable wealth. The great stumbling block to 

 many who have attempted to deal with the question of old 

 age pensions has been the failure to realise that the 

 •essentials for the support, maintenance, and the life of the 

 individual units of the State in any one year, do not consist 

 of, or depend upon the previous accumulations of the com- 

 pounded interest of sinking funds, money, or nominal in 

 vestments, or savings. The province of monetary invest- 



