This use of the term Wealth is in harmony with the usage of ordinary life: and, at the same time, it includes those goods, and only those, which come clearly within the scope of economic science, as defined in Book I; and which may therefore be called economic goods.For it includes all those things, external to a man, which (i) belong to him, and do not belong equally to his neighbours, and therefore are distinctly his; and which (ii) are directly capable of a money measure, - a measure that represents on the one side the efforts and sacrifices by which they have been called into existence, and, on the other, the wants which they satisfy.(4*)3.A broader view of wealth may indeed be taken for some purposes; but then recourse must be had to a special interpretation clause, to prevent confusion.Thus, for instance, the carpenter's skill is as direct a means of enabling him to satisfy other people's material wants, and therefore indirectly his own, as are the tools in his work-basket; and perhaps it may be convenient to have a term which will include it as part of wealth in a broader use.Pursuing the lines indicated by Adam Smith,(5*) and followed by most continental economists, we may define personal wealth so as to include all those energies, faculties, and habits which directly contribute to making people industrially efficient; together with those business connections and associations of any kind, which we have already reckoned as part of wealth in the narrower use of the term.Industrial faculties have a further claim to be regarded as economic in the fact that their value is as a rule capable of some sort of indirect measurement.(6*)The question whether it is ever worth while to speak of them as wealth is merely one of convenience, though it has been much discussed as if it were one of principle.
Confusion would certainly be caused by using the term "wealth" by itself when we desire to include a person's industrial qualities."Wealth" simply should always mean external wealth only.But little harm, and some good seems likely to arise from the occasional use of the phrase " material and personal wealth."4.But we still have to take account of those material goods which are common to him with his neighbours; and which therefore it would be a needless trouble to mention when comparing his wealth with theirs; though they may be important for some purposes, and especially for comparisons between the economic conditions of distant places or distant times.
These goods consist of the benefits which he derives from living in a certain place at a certain time, and being a member of a certain state or community; they include civil and military security, and the right and opportunity to make use of public property and institutions of all kinds, such as roads, gaslight, etc., and rights to justice or to a free education.The townsman and the countryman have each of them for nothing many advantages which the other either cannot get at all, or can get only at great expense.Other things being equal, one person has more real wealth in its broadest sense than another, if the place in which the former lives has a better climate, better roads, better water, more wholesome drainage; and again better newspapers, books, and places of amusement and instruction.House-room, food and clothing, which would be insufficient in a cold climate, may be abundant in a warm climate: on the other hand, that warmth which lessens men's physical needs, and makes them rich with but a slight provision of material wealth, makes them poor in the energy that procures wealth.
Many of these things are collective goods.i.e.goods, which are not in private ownership.And this brings us to consider wealth from the social, as opposed to the individual point of view.
5.Let us then look at those elements of the wealth of a nation which are commonly ignored when estimating the wealth of the individuals composing it.The most obvious forms of such wealth are public material property of all kinds, such as roads and canals, buildings and parks, gasworks and waterworks; though unfortunately many of them have been secured not by public savings, but by public borrowings, and there is the heavy "negative" wealth of a large debt to be set against them.
But the Thames has added more to the wealth of England than all its canals, and perhaps even than all its railroads.And though the Thames is a free gift of nature (except in so far as its navigation has been improved), while the canal is the work of man, yet we ought for many purposes to reckon the Thames a part of England's wealth.
German economists often lay stress on the non-material elements of national wealth; and it is right to do this in some problems relating to national wealth, but not in all.Scientific knowledge indeed, wherever discovered, soon becomes the property of the whole civilized world, and may be considered as cosmopolitan rather than as specially national wealth.The same is true of mechanical inventions and of many other improvements in the arts of production; and it is true of music.But those kinds of literature which lose their force by translation, may be regarded as in a special sense the wealth of those nations in whose language they are written.And the organization of a free and well-ordered State is to be regarded for some purposes as an important element of national wealth.
