e fish
are not wealth. Even if the sea belonged to a private individual, as
the oil-wells belong to Mr. Rockefeller and a few other individuals,
nobody would be any the better off. Fish in the sea are not wealth,
but fish in the market-places are. Why, because labor has been
expended in catching them and bringing them to market.

There are millions of tons of coal in Pennsylvania. President Baer
said, you will remember, that God had appointed him and a few other
gentlemen to look after that coal, to act as His trustees. And Mr.
Baer wasn't joking, either. That is the funny part of the story: he
was actually serious when he uttered that foolish blasphemy! There are
also millions of people who want coal, whose very lives depend upon
it. People who will pay almost any price for it rather than go without
it.

The coal is there, millions of tons of it. But suppose that nobody
digs for it; that the coal is left where Nature produced it, or where
God placed it, whichever description you prefer? Do you think it would
do anybody any good lying there, just as it lay untouched when the
Indian roved through the forests ignorant of its presence? Would
anybody be wealthier on account of the coal being there? Of course
not. It only becomes wealth when somebody's labor makes it available.
Every dollar of the wealth of our coal-mining industry, as of the
fishing industries, represents human labor.

I need not go through the list of all our industries, Jonathan, to
make this truth clear to you. If it pleases you to do so, you can
easily do that for yourself. I simply wanted to make it clear that the
Socialists are stating a great universal truth when they say that
labor applied to natural resources is the true source of all wealth.
As Sir William Petty said long ago: "Labor is the father and land is
the mother of all wealth."

But you must be careful, Jonathan, not to misuse that word "labor."
Socialists don't mean the labor of the hands only, when they speak of
labor. Take the case of the coal-mines again, just for a moment:
There are men who dig the coal, called miners. But before they can
work there must be other men to make tools and machinery for them. And
before there can be machinery made and fixed in its proper place there
must be surveyors and engineers, men with a special education and
capacity, to draw the plans, and so on. Then there must be some men to
organize the business, to take orders for the coal, to see that it i