the uneconomical methods the more prosperous the nation is likely to become.

Economical ways of getting a living. By the economical ways of acquiring wealth are meant all those ways by which an individual contributes to the wealth of the whole community as much as he gets. He may make his contribution by laboring either to produce commodities or to render direct service to some of his fellow men. In either case, where he gives honest service for honest pay he is enriching someone else in proportion as he is himself enriched. A nation in which this rule prevails universally, where everyone is contributing to the well-being of someone else in exact proportion as he himself prospers, has at least one of the conditions of general prosperity. If each one is capable and well trained, so that he can give efficient service (that is, if he contributes largely to the prosperity and well-being of someone else), then everyone is prosperous, which is the same as saying that the nation as a whole is prosperous.

Primary industries. The economical ways of getting a living are subdivided into three classes: first, the primary industries; second, the secondary industries; and, third, professional and personal service. The primary industries are those which produce commodities directly from their original and natural source,—which take material as nature provides it and appropriate it to some human use or change it from a form which is nonusable to a form which is either usable or one stage nearer to usableness. For example, the elements which produce plant growth are not, in their natural state, available for human use. The farming industry converts these elements into something which is either usable, as in the case of fruits and vegetables, or at least one stage on its way toward usableness, as in the case of grain or live stock. The mining industry brings the crude ore, which is not usable, into a condition where it is either usable or at least one stage nearer usability.

Secondary industries. The secondary industries are those which take the products of the primary industries which are

in need of further modification and carry them through the remaining stages on their way to final usability. The iron ore, for example, must be worked over many times before it becomes an automobile or the blade of a pocketknife. The coal must sometimes be transported long distances before it can warm our houses. The farmer's grain, besides being transported long distances from places where there is a surplus to other places where there is a shortage, must also be stored from threshing time until it is needed by the consumers, and it must be ground into flour and baked into bread or manufactured into some other form of food before it is ready for use.

Services. Personal and professional services include all lines of work which do not directly produce salable commodities. Lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, actors, barbers, and even policemen and congressmen, besides multitudes of others, are performing professional and personal services. Their labor has sometimes been called unproductive labor, merely on the ground that it does not produce vendible commodities. Though the writers who apply that term to them do not mean to cast any reflection upon them, always being careful to state that "unproductive" does not mean useless, nevertheless it seems better to avoid the use of a term which is so easily misunderstood. The important distinction is not that between productive and unproductive labor but between the economical and uneconomical ways of acquiring wealth. Even though the labor of the policeman does not directly produce a commodity, as the labor of a shoemaker does, for example, nevertheless the shoemaker and every other honest worker is helped to work better by the law and order which a good police system helps to support. They are helped also by the physician, the teacher, and others who labor in the field of direct professional service. There is an ancient story of some musicians who formed a part of a captured army. They requested that they be set free by their captors, on the ground that they had not taken part in the fighting. The captors replied, "By your music you inspired others to fight; therefore you must be treated as though you were your

selves fighters." By a similar line of reasoning it could be said that if musicians inspire others to work, they are themselves workers and are contributing their part toward the national prosperity. Any of these economic activities may be carried on either competitively or coöperatively. The basis of competition is found in the conflicting desires of mankind, and these desires come into conflict mainly because of scarcity.

Honorable activities. It has been suggested already that certain activities may be both pleasurable and productive. It should be added that they may also be highly honorable and bring a great deal of social esteem to the producers. In fact, the highest prosperity can never be achieved by any nation that does not manage to make productive action both pleasurable and honorable. If the three classes of activity are always sharply distinguished and never combined, the nation will always be poor.

If, for example, all genuinely productive work should be held in low esteem by the people, and if their habits of mind were such as to make it impossible for them to derive any pleasure from productive work, they would always suffer from a dearth of material goods. No one would then do productive work except under the stress of want or the motive of greed. But if productive work is held in high esteem, and if the habits of mind of the people are such as to enable them to derive a great deal of their pleasure from productive work, it is certain that a great deal of productive work will be done. Men will not need to spend so much time in mere self-enjoyment, because they will get a certain amount of enjoyment from their productive work; neither will they be tempted to abandon productive work in order to win esteem or popularity in other ways. In short, they will have three motives to work, instead of oné, and will work harder, produce more goods, win more esteem, and have a better time in consequence.

Attitude toward work. One of the most important differences between the prosperous and the unprosperous nations is found in this attitude toward work. The unprosperous nations are

generally found to have many holidays and to spend a great deal of their time and energy amusing themselves in unproductive ways. It seems logical to them to do so and illogical to work when they might enjoy themselves. It does not seem to occur to them that there can be such a thing as enjoying work. Any nation that has ever grown really prosperous has had, at least in its days of growth, many working days and few holidays, has managed to take a great deal of joy and pride in work, and work has been held in high esteem.

Even in the most industrious nations there are always demoralizing tendencies. One result of prosperity is to make people desire more expensive amusements as well as more costly goods. There is a tendency to multiply holidays, shorten the working day, the working week, or the working lifetime, and, in general, to turn from work to other things for pleasure.

Joy in work. Why work longer when we have goods enough, is a common question. If one is so constituted as to be unable to see that work may itself be a pleasure, there is no answer that will satisfy him. What he needs is not argument but a change of heart, a new outlook on life, a new sense of value. Until he can be made to feel pleasure in work no reasoning will convince him.

Men who do not feel pleasure in work will naturally, as soon as they are prosperous enough, work less and spend more time in pleasurable but nonproductive activities. Having builded their barns larger and filled them with good things, they will say, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry"; that is, they will lose their souls. But men who can and do take pleasure in their work behave in a very different way. It makes a vast difference in the prosperity of a nation whether its citizens generally behave in the one way or the other. If they generally stop producing as soon as they have their barns full, the prosperity of the country is limited by that fact; but there is no conceivable limit to the prosperity of a people who enjoy their work.

Preferring the other man's work. Another demoralizing tendency is that of disliking one's own work and imagining that some other kind of work would be much pleasanter. They who have to do work requiring great discretion sometimes grow weary of thinking perpetually about one puzzling question after another and imagine that they would enjoy routine work that did not require much thinking, while those who grow weary of routine work imagine that they would enjoy work that required hard thinking. They who have to carry heavy responsibilities imagine that they would enjoy work that involved no responsibility, while those who carry little responsibility long for more. Sentimentalists sometimes excuse themselves and others for disliking their work by contrasting it with what they style creative work. This term has never been satisfactorily defined and probably means little more than pleasant work, and to use it in this sense is to beg the question. All productive work is creative in the best sense.

Quite as demoralizing as the tendency to separate all work from all pleasure, or to regard all work as irksome rather than pleasant, is the tendency to separate estimable from productive work. This tendency shows itself wherever productive effort is held in low esteem and other activities in high esteem. There have been men who have won a certain kind of applause by boasting that what they were doing was of no use to anybody. It is not uncommon to speak disparagingly of mere business or industry as contrasted with some of the ornamental callings, and of those who produce the goods which we like to consume as mere Philistines. With the best of intentions, even certain kinds of highly useful work are sometimes called social service to distinguish them from other kinds of useful work, to the disparagement of the latter. Some kinds of work may be more productive than others, but all productive work is social service, and there ought not to be any such distinction.

Social service. Probably the highest form of social service is found in the ordinary productive business enterprise, though it is not, of course, the only form. If we assume that people