it. So with every form of wealth. All economic value
disappears when the thought of use is wanting. Such use, whether
practically instantaneous, like the destruction of the gunpowder
projecting the bullet, or extended through hundreds of years, as in the
wearing out of a castle, or a bridge, is properly called consumption of
wealth.

A majority of the great problems concerning social welfare are connected
with the use of wealth, and therefore fall under the discussion of
consumption. Indeed, so long as there is little accumulated wealth, as in
the savage state, social problems have little significance. The statement
of the Apostle Paul, "The love of money is the root of all evil," while
not confined in application to wealth already accumulated, has its most
important bearing in the fact that wealth accumulated is itself a power to
be used or abused by whoever controls it. The saying of Emerson, "The best
political economy is care and culture of men," applies most strictly to
the uses of wealth and the methods of its consumption. The great question
of today in every civilized land is, How can the accumulations of power in
the shape of wealth made by this generation be used to establish a
continuous welfare, not only for this generation, but for its successors?
The wants of society today include not only a reasonable provision for
life and health and wisdom and virtue during the life of those who are now
active, but an equal provision for the same wants increased with each
succeeding generation. In all thought of consuming wealth, we must
remember that power in this form is rightly used only when power in some
other form results. Thus wealth is consumed, according to natural laws,
either for reproducing itself in more advantageous form or for sustaining
human power in form of health or wisdom or virtue.

We have social welfare as the result of wealth consumed, or used up.
Society is interested in all the wealth accumulated, and the methods of
its accumulation and its fair distribution are a part of social machinery;
yet these have their chief significance in the final consumption. It is
not what we have, but what we do with it, that makes society interested in
our possessions. It is not what society has, but how it uses it, that
settles the chief questions of welfare or illfare. Not only gunpowder, but
every conceivable power in material wealth, has blessing or bane in the
use to which it is put. So the welfare of a commu