The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1901-10-29
The Idea of Wealth; Classes and
Kinds of wealth; Various Modes
of Defining Wealth.
CHAPTER 1.


What is wealth? This is more of a
problem tEan might at first be suspected
The difference between a rich man and q
Poor man is not difficult to understand
But it is rot individual wealth, it is gem
eral wealth, that we have to consider
General wealth, too, at first seems to be
quite familiar thought. A plain person
can appreciate well enough for all prac-
teal purposes what it means when the
present people of Illinois are called
wealthy in comparison with the Indians
once resident here. Everyone will at
tach more or less useful meaning to the
language on hearing it said that our ma
tlonal wealth is rapidly increasing. But
IT we wish to make a closer study, TO
see precisely what the idea of wealth
includes and excludes, we shall have TO
exercise considerable patience and men
tai activity. Still the effort will be worth
while.
1t will be a first step forward to say
that wealth consists in all those classes
OF things, powers, relations and influ-
ences which result from human effort
and at the same time directly contrib
ute to human welfare in it's temporal as
pect. Wealth is made up, in part, of
things, in the corporal sense of that
word, tangible things, articles ehattels
and goods, houses, mills, cattle, gold,
wheat, corn and the like-these every
body sees, are forms of wealth But
there is non-material wealth. Trained
mental power in any useful direction is
wealth. There are relations, too, which
are wealth, as the good will of a phys1-
clan or of a business house, which can
be sold for money. And there are influ-
ences which are wealth, like the credit
of banker, that he has industriously
built UP in the course of years, with the
view of making his business more sue
cessful.
idea has till recently been the prevalent
one, who deny the name of wealth to
these powers, relations and Influences
to everything, in a word, which is not
of material nature. 1t is, of course,
not a Strikingly~ vital question whether
an accountants dexterity is called an
actual form of wealth or only a condi-
ton helpful to the promotion of wealth.
In either case students OF the subject
will have to consider it. But I much
prefer to name such things actual ,ele-
ments Of wealth. What sense is there,
for instance, in ranking as wealth a
dose of medicine which cures one pa
tlent, while excluding from the category
a physicians advice so sage that it cures
another patient without medicine? Is
not a doctors skill which cures as val
udple as OOctOr PHI Wnlon cures!
And if skill is to be classed as wealth,
credit ought to be so classed, at least
where it is the product of thrifty pur-
! pose, as well as those relations, of which
L gave an instance, between firms and
! customers, which are the results of con-
scious and deliberate effort. For such
relations, be it observed, in that
they proceed from human agency, con
siderably differ in character from those
in which the general organization of So
ciety consists, the latter being built UP
by natural processes, as it were, man
playing in them the part of a purpose
less instrument, not that of a conscious
agent. Wealth, then, includes various
sorts of imlnaterial things as well as va
rious sorts of material things.
But that object, or that power, or that
relation, or that influence which is pro
perly rated as wealth must belong in g
class of realities that become what they
are by human labor. We speak indeed
of natural wealth, which we say nation
possesses in fine harbors, navigable riv-