138 



themselves ; and though rightly included 

 in the aggregate fixed wealth of a country 

 by statisticians, these do not in any sense 

 enter into the personal consumption of 

 the rich owner any more than they enter 

 into the personal consumption of the 

 workman engaged in connection with such 

 forms of national wealth. 



The mass of Socialist writers wish us to 

 infer that the "toil" of the "masses," 

 " the lower ten millions," alone " is the 

 active factor that produces all wealth." 

 Entertaining such a view, it is not 

 remarkable that they should regard the 

 riches of the •* upper ten thousand " as a 

 hoard mysteriously and wrongfully ab- 

 stracted from the forces actively engaged 

 in producing wealth. 



If by the toil of the masses they mean 

 that all the physical forces rfquisite to 

 transport and transform natural materials 

 to suit the needs of man, they are mani- 

 festly wrong ; for (exclusive of the mere 

 gratuitous forces of Nature, such as 

 natural chemical changes, multiplication 

 by the mysterious forces of life, sunlight 

 and heat forces, gravitation, the rain, 

 dew, and the fertile soils, and 

 the animal, vegetable, and mineral 

 products in their natural state and 

 position) there are the active forces 

 set in motion, not of the expendi- 

 ture of muscular energy, but of mental 

 and moral force, exerted by men of fore- 

 thought, of skill, of invention, and of the 

 provident who designedly saved from 

 immediate personal consumption, and 

 devoted such savings purposely to the 

 construction of mechanical and other aids 

 devised or discoveied by skilled minds, 

 whereby the forces of Nature, such as 

 gravitation, chemistry, steam, water, 

 wind, electricity, leverage, lower animals 

 are so captured, tamed, and drilled, that 

 they now exert a physical force in the pro- 

 duction of man's wealth— whether in the 

 way of transporting from place to place, 

 or in transforming materials from the 

 natural raw state to the highly finished — 

 compared with which the brute or muscu- 

 lar force actually exerted by all the work- 

 ing men of the globe, forms the most in- 

 significant fraction. 



The brains of man can alone be credited 

 with invention and discovery, not his 

 muscular power. It is to the ac- 



cumulations of savings from personal 

 consumption by the laborers and others of 

 former times that we are indebted for the 

 necessary stores devoted to the construc- 

 tion of the powerful and ingenious 

 mechanical and other labor-saving auxili- 

 aries now engaged in aiding the current 

 labor of man, and not, as falsely assumed, 

 to the mere muscular energy and labor- 

 time exerted and devoted by those who 

 happen to be the laborers or workmen of 

 the present hour. 



Recent estimates of the measure oi 

 energy exerted each year in the production^ 

 distribution, and necessary modification of 

 consumable wealth — the satisfactions of 

 man, by capitalist's steam power machines 

 alone — are approximately equivalent to 

 the maximum energy of abuut 1500 

 million persons, of whom it is estimated 

 that there are only 600 million bread- 

 winners. We may be perfectly safe in 

 assuming that the energy exerted by all 

 classes of capitalists' auxiliary machines, 

 including those already in the possession 

 of the State as such, to be equal to the maxi- 

 mum energy of 1200 million breadwinnera, 

 i.e., equal to twice the physical force of all 

 living breadwinners of the globe. In the 

 Commonwealth of Austra'ia at present 

 the number of breadwinners under £150 

 income per year number about 1,709,000 

 persons. These, for purposes of illustra- 

 tion, may be safely taken as the wage- 

 earner group. The breadwinners £150 

 income per year and over, numbered 

 135,000; and this group, for rough pur- 

 poses of comparison, may be taken to re- 

 present the capitalist group. Now, if the 

 capitalists' 'energy machines engaged in 

 the production of consumable wealth be 

 taken to represent no more than twice all 

 the available force of man, their equivalent 

 in the Australian Commonwealth would 

 be represented by about 3,418,000 bread- 

 winners, thus : — 



Relative Value of Physical Energy 

 exerted by the various agencies en- 

 gaged in the production of Consumable 

 Wealth :— 



