would really apply as well to rocks and rivers. Three-quarters of the
whole surface of the globe is covered with seas; but this vast extent of
salt water furnishes little wealth, except whales, seals, sea-weed, and
a few other kinds of animals and plants. Hence, when we speak of land,
we really mean any source of materials--any natural agent, and we may
say that

#land = source of materials = natural agent#.

#18. Labour.# Nothing is more plain, however, than that natural agents
alone do not make wealth. A man would perish in the most fertile spot if
he did not take some trouble in appropriating the things around him.
Fruit growing wild on the trees must be plucked before it becomes
wealth, and wild game must be caught before it can be cooked and eaten.
We must spend a great deal of labour if we wish to have comfortable
clothes and houses and regular supplies of food; the proper sorts of
materials must be gradually got together, and shaped and manufactured.
Thus the amount of wealth which people can obtain depends far more upon
their activity and skill in labouring than upon the abundance of
materials around them.

As already remarked, North America is a very rich land, containing
plenty of fine soil, seams of coal, veins of metal, rivers full of fish,
and forests of fine timber, everything, in short, needed in the way of
materials; yet the American Indians lived in this land for thousands of
years in great poverty, because they had not the knowledge and
perseverance to enable them to labour properly and produce wealth out
of natural agents. Thus we see clearly that skilful and intelligent and
regular labour is requisite to the production of wealth.

#19. Capital.# In order that we may produce much wealth, we require
something further, namely, the #capital#, which supports labourers while
they are engaged in their work. Men must have food once a day, not to
say two or three times; if then they have no stock of food on hand, they
must go at once and get it in the best way they can, for fear of
starving. They must grub up roots, or gather grass seeds, or catch wild
animals--if they can. When working in this way, they usually spend a
great deal of labour for very little result; Australian natives
sometimes have to cut down a large tree with stone axes, which is very
hard work, in order to catch an opossum or two. Men who live in this way
from hand to mouth have no time nor strength to make arrangements so as
to get