283 Wisconsin stats agricultural society. 
PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION, DEMAND AND 
SUPPLY. 
Read before the State Agricultural Convention in February, 1873. 
BY J. B. PARKINSON, A. M., 
Prof, of Civil Polity and International Law , in the University of Wisconsin. 
While human society shall last, and human nature remain un¬ 
changed, there will always be grievances to meet and wrongs to 
be righted. No age nor nation has ever yet escaped this demand 
upon it, and none need hope to do so. The same impulses and 
imperfections in human nature, which made the necessity for law 
and government in the beginning, still exist, and every step in the 
march of civilization, like a new turn of the kaleidoscope, pre¬ 
sents a new phase of relationships and dependencies. To adjust 
these properly, they must be understood ; to understand them, they 
must be studied ; to study them aright, prejudice and passion must 
give way to sober reason and sound judgment Perfection, then,, 
in the adjustment of social and industrial relations can never be 
realized so long as new forces are continually brought into action,, 
and new conditions evolved. This is an age of associations and 
conventions. The fact is one of encouragement. There is 
strength in union if properly conserved, and truth comes of fair 
discussion and healthy exercise of thought. The purpose of 
these gatherings is not more to cheer and strengthen each indi¬ 
vidual in his chosen life work, than to discuss its relationships to 
other interests with which it comes in contact. But I shall not 
dwell upon the connections and nice dependencies which hinge 
together or interweave the multiplied industries of the world. I 
shall content myself in attempting to present some of the funda¬ 
mental principles of Political Economy which seem to have a gen¬ 
eral and practical bearing, and whose recognition is necessary to 
clear the way for righting wrongs and meeting grievances. 
The moving impulse in the economic world is human wants, 
the ultimate object is to satisfy these wants, and the absolute in¬ 
tervening condition to this end is human toil. The science of po- 
