292 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
ated at $1.25 per bushel, to the Atlantic seaboard, or to Liverpool, 
where that desire is estimated in the one case, at $2.00, and in the 
other at $3.00 per bushel, is no less a producer in the strict sense 
of the term, than he who sowed the seed and stirred the soil as 
conditions for the harvest. 
All forms of productive effort may be united in one commodity. 
Indeed there are few which do not combine them all. No product 
is complete till it is made ready to be put to its final use, and no 
unessential part of the work is to bring it to a market. 
I have dwelt somewhat upon this matter of production because 
it is fundamental. It is not uncommon to hear those whose 
business it is to transport commodities from one part of the coun¬ 
try to another, or to effect and facilitate exchanges, designated as 
unproductive laborers. The term is an unfortunate one. It creates 
a false impression, and tends to vitiate right thinking, and right 
acting upon questions of vital concern. Nothing is gained, but 
everything is lost by starting with false premises. 
Agriculture forms the base of the pyramid of production, but 
not the whole of that pyramid. Four-fifths, perhaps, of the human 
race are directly or indirectly engaged in it. From this source, 
the markets and mills of the world are supplied with materials and 
with workmen also. “ Here, after all its hurts, humanity comes 
for healing. War and pestilence, the fierce contest of the mart, 
the stifling atmosphere of the mill, may waste our kind in quick 
or lingering deaths; but still, by the side of the brooks, men will 
i 
be born to hold up the forms of industry and social order when 
their supporters faint and fail.” 
All production implies consumption. One is the direct opposite 
of the other. But as production does not, and cannot create matter, 
neither, can consumption annihilate it. As utility is the thing 
produced, so utility is the thing destroyed. While material pro¬ 
duction consists in fitting natural objects to satisfy human desire, 
consumption consists in unfitting them to do so. 
Consumption may be voluntary or accidental. In the one case 
we expect a return, in the other we do not. A gate left unlatched 
may be beaten in pieces by the wind, or it may be worn out by le¬ 
gitimate use. The only difference is, its consumption in one case 
serves no purpose, and in the other it serves a very important one. 
