Thu RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1885 
A Primer of Economics 
By John J. Dillon 
Part II 
THE PRODUCTION OF WEALTH 
What is necessary to the production of 
wealth? 
The requisites for the production of 
wealth are land, labor and capital. Some 
economists name only two agents as neces¬ 
sity to production : labor and natural ob¬ 
jects ; but these agents are broadly in¬ 
terpreted to include capital and land. 
The importance of land is so evidently 
essential to the process of production 
that some French economists asserted in 
the eighteenth century that land is the 
only source of wealth. Another French 
writer classified talent as an agent of 
production, and some socialist writers 
still insist that labor is the sole source of 
wealth; but standard authorities agree 
that the joint agency of land, capital and 
labor is essential to the production of 
wealth. 
LAND 
As an element of production, what is 
included as land? 
As a requisite of production, laud in¬ 
cludes the surface of the earth*, its min¬ 
eral resources and the natural forces of 
wind, water, electricity, gravitation, co¬ 
hesion and all natural forces. 
Can the natural condition of land be 
improved to aid production? 
The productive power of land is in¬ 
creased by cultivation, irrigation, drain¬ 
age. rotation of crops, use of fertilizers 
and machinery. 
LABOR 
How does labor contribute to produc¬ 
tion? 
Labor’s contribution to production is to 
set things in motion or to cause things to 
change places. No wealth can be created 
without labor, and yet labor can do no 
more than cause things to change places. 
Natural forces do the rest. The farmer 
makes a depression in the soil by remov¬ 
ing some of the earth, lie places a seed 
in the furrow and replaces the earth, lie 
can add manure to feed the plant, and 
water to preserve the moisture. lie can 
cover it with glass to intensify the heat 
of the sun. and in other ways change the 
location of things, but he can do no 
more. Nature does the rest. The car¬ 
penter moves the saw back and forth 
across the board and divides it. The 
woodman moving the ax from place to 
place fells the tree. In all. the work of 
the farm, the mine and the shop, the 
laborer moves things from place to place. 
The natural agencies of heat. wind, water 
and air, electricity, sunlight, friction, 
gravitation, cohesion, attraction and 
countless other natural agencies perform 
the miracles of production that man can 
scarcely understand, much less of himself 
accomplish. 
Is productive labor physical only? 
Productive labor is both physical and 
mental. As sometimes expressed, it is 
both muscular and nervous. As a matter 
of fact, all human labor includes both 
physical and mental exertion, but. of 
course, in different degrees. The simplest 
labor performed by man requires intelli¬ 
gence to direct its physical human ener¬ 
gy ; and the highest mental conception of 
the sculptor, the painter or inventor re¬ 
quires physical exertion in some degree 
of skill and force to give expression to 
the concept of the mind. 
How shall we distinguish betweeu pro¬ 
ductive and unproductive labor? 
This treatise is too elementary for an 
exhaustive discussion of productive and 
unproductive labor. Some authors take 
pages for the discussion of the subject, 
and there has been much controversy be¬ 
tween economists as to the precise mean¬ 
ing of the terms. This has been probably 
due to the fact that some people assume 
that there is a reproach attached to the 
term unproductive. If true at all. this 
is only so in theory. Some of the most 
worthy and respected callings are not 
directly productive of material wealth. 
To get a clear understanding of these 
distinctions it is necessary to remember 
that labor never did and never can create 
material or matter. When we say that 
we create or produce we do not mean 
that we produce the matter which com¬ 
poses the material objects; but that we 
change or mould the matter that we find 
in the world into new forms that are 
more useful to us. The scientist says 
that we create utilities, which is another 
way of saying that we put new and more 
useful qualities into things. On the other 
hand, when we speak of destroying ob¬ 
jects in consumption, we do not mean 
that we destroy the matter in them. Mat¬ 
ter is indestructible. We can only change 
the forms and destroy the qualities which 
the matter formerly possessed. 
With these observations in mind, ami 
remembering that production is asso¬ 
ciated in the practical mind with the new 
appearance of wealth, we can readily de¬ 
fine productive labor as acts which pro¬ 
duce material wealth, or as Mill puts it. 
“exertion which produce utilities em¬ 
bodied in material objects.” Unproduc¬ 
tive labor will likewise be sufficiently de¬ 
fined by saying that it is exertion which 
does not result in the creation of mate¬ 
rial wealth. The farmer, the shoemaker, 
the weaver, the carrier and the merchant 
are productive laborers. The professional 
singer, the dancer, the public reader and 
the actor are unproductive laborers. 
There is still another class, of which the 
doctor, the teacher, the preacher and the 
inventor are examples. Directly, they 
create no material wealth, but indirectly 
they may and do contribute to its pro¬ 
duction by making more efficient the 
labor that contributes directly to the pro¬ 
duction of material wealth. 
There is another class of wholly un¬ 
productive laborers or non-producers that 
has escaped the attention of the econo¬ 
mists, but who deserve consideration from 
the fact that they have become a burden 
to society. This class is becoming so 
numerous as to be a real menace. It in¬ 
cludes a great army of useless and super¬ 
fluous office-holders and public employees, 
an army of merchants and dealers and 
speculators and middlemen generally, 
who multiply themselves uselessly be¬ 
tween real producers and consumers, and 
do no real service to either, but on the 
contrary become a burden to both, and 
a great army of lackeys of one degree of 
usefulness or another who infest the nor¬ 
mal walks of life and exact tribute alike 
from the vain and the prudent. They are 
met at every turn in public places, and 
enforce a trivial service for which custom 
prescribes a liberal fee. The average man 
is capable of doing these things for him¬ 
self. He does it at home, and prefers to 
do it elsewhere, but he is compelled by 
custom to give encouragement to a 
system that is economically wasteful. 
The superfluous public official or em¬ 
ployee, the useless middleman and the 
ubiquitous lackey form a large class of 
non-producers who must be fed and 
clothed and housed by those who do real 
productive labor. It would be a public 
service to set them to work. 
Seeding to Grass in Corn 
In a recent issue a New England 
farmer told about seeding to grass and 
clover in the corn. While this seeding 
is designed to grow a meadow, the work 
was done much like seeding a cover crop. 
Several readers have asked him how it 
was done. The plan of seeding to grass 
in corn is common in some parts of New 
England, and when it is well done the 
resulting meadow is good. The following 
note gives the practice of Mr. Sumner: 
lie aims to sow bis clover from the 
first to the 10th of July, using 10 to 12 
lbs. of clover, usually Alsike and Red, 
and from six quarts to a peck of Timothy 
per acre. He cultivates about three 
times before seeding, using for all culti¬ 
vation a fine-tooth cultivator and hand 
hoes usually once when free from weeds, 
but if weedy he hand-hoes twice, in order 
to insure a good catch of grass seed. It 
is ne<x*ssary to sow fairly early in order 
that the grass may get a good hold before 
the corn is cut, and get well started be¬ 
fore the land freezes, because the eleva¬ 
tion here is 1,600 feet and the seasons 
are short. 
It is very true that in many places 
seeding clover in corn is not a successful 
project, but in this county there are 
many who use it exclusively, and very 
seldom fail to get a very good catch of 
clover. The use of lime and the con¬ 
tinued growth of clover, with plenty of 
manure, I believe makes the catch of 
clover practically certain. J. H. p. 
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