BY R. M. JOHNSTON, I.S.O., F.S.S. 5 



able personal service, the consumer destroys or annihilates 

 the commodity, per se, with its economic monetary value, 

 transforming a costly product into one of the necessary 

 satisfactions or enjoyments by which the life of man is 

 sustained, and without such final absorption of costly but 

 necessary wants, life wo'iild not be possiblci. 



By looking at the whole question in this light, it 

 would seem to be true that the last wtage of any completed 

 commoidity isi placed in the same position as the last stiagc 

 in the completion of a necessary and valuable personal 

 service, so far as Adam Smith s test of barren and unpro- 

 ductive services is concerned. In this aspect of the 

 question, all the services of prim^ary producers, artificers, 

 manufacturers, and merchants, do not really differ, essen- 

 tially, from that of menials," nor from each other, inas- 

 much as all values of commodity products, in common 

 with personal service products, cease to exist when ab- 

 sorbed, dissolved, or transformed, into the benefits, satis- 

 factions, and enjoyments involved in actual consumption. 

 The actual realisatio^n of the enjoyment of the needs and 

 satisfactions of life, involved in the very act of consumption, 

 of valued products, is, in itself, the alpha and omega of 

 real wealth. All money or other values related thereto^ 

 are mere measurements of this wealth of consumption. 



It is the instruments of production — human labour 

 and its auxiliary aids (kept up to pristine value, by re- 

 newals, repairs, and fresh creations) — which permanently 

 continue to retain monetary value — not the perishable 

 products, per se, actually appropriated and dissolved in 

 annual or periodical consumpticn. 



This end is, truly, the great objeoti, as well as the 

 motive, of all human producing eft'ort. 



The annual value of "Consumable Wealth" only re- 

 presents about 4 per cent, of the nominal capital wealth, 

 of a country. 



The former represents the actual wealth produced 

 available for use or consumption within the current year; 

 the latter represents the estimated nominal present capital 

 value of the future productions of exchange value. 



No matter how great may be the estimate of the 

 present capital value of "claim on future productions," 

 only about one-twenty-fifth of its value, of actual products, 

 can be appropriated or abi:,orbed within any one year. 



The following tabular extracts from "The Statesman's 

 Pocket Year Book of Tasmania, 1917," may better indi- 



