American Political Economy Author:Francis Bowen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: are made the most efficient means of guarding it from harm, and advancing its welfare. In the vast round of employments in civilized society, there is hardly one... more » in which a person can profitably exert himself, without at the same time profiting the community in which he lives, and lending aid to thousands of human beings whom he never saw. We are all servants of one another without wishing it, and even without knowing it; we arc all co-operating with each other as busily and effectively as the bees in a hive, and most of us with as little perception as the bees have, that each individual effort is essential to the common defence and general prosperity. CHAPTER II. HOW WEALTH IS CHEATED, AND WHAT CONSTITUTES EXCHANGEABLE VALUE: THE MEASURE OP VALUE: HOW WEALTH IS DISTRIBUTED AMONG JT3 PRODUCERS. A Distinction has been briefly pointed out between wealth and property. textit{Wealth consists of the aggregate of articles, chiefly material or tangible, though some immaterial products are ranked among them, which supply the wants and satisfy the desires of man; and the stock of national wealth " is kept in existence from age to age, not by preservation, but by perpetual reproduction. Every part of it is used or destroyed, — generally very soon after it is produced; but those who consume it are employed meanwhile in producing more," — not only enough to replace what is consumed, but to furnish a surplus, or profit. textit{Property is the ownership of these articles, and often remains unchanged, or fixed, for many generations, —just as the river continues, though the water is perpetually running out of it into the sea. As the articles change while the ownership continues, there must be evidences of that ownership, or " tickets of transfer," as I have once called them, — mere re...« less