170 CAPITAL— THE MOTHER OF LABOUR, iv 



demonstrate it. One conclusion or the other must 

 be hopelessly wrong; and, even at the cost of go- 

 ing once more over some of the ground traversed 

 in this essay and that on " Natural and Political 

 Rights/' * I propose to show that the error lies 

 with "Progress and Poverty"; in which work, 

 so far as political science is concerned, the pover- 

 ty is, to my eye, much more apparent than the 

 progress. 



To begin at the beginning. The author pro- 

 pounds a definition of wealth: "Nothing which 

 nature supplies to man without his labour is 

 wealth " (p. 28). Wealth consists of " natural 

 substances or products which have been adapted 

 by human labour to human use or gratification, 

 their value depending upon the amount of labour 

 which, upon the average, would be required to 

 produce things of hke kind " (p. 27). The follow- 

 ing examples of wealth are given: — 



Buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and min- 

 eral products, manufactured goods, ships, wagons, fur- 

 niture, and the like (p. 27). 



I take it that native metals, coal and brick 

 clay, are " mineral products "; and I quite believe 

 that they are properly termed " wealth." But 

 when a seam of coal crops out at the surface, and 

 lumps of coal are to be had for the picking up; 

 or when native copper lies about in nuggets, or 



* Collected Essays, vol. i. pp. 359-382. 



