SECTION B

THE PRODUCTIVE INDUSTRIES

The chief methods by which the productive forces are made to work for our advantage

CHAPTER XVI

THE EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES

Ways of acquiring wealth. In the diagram on the preceding page the ways of acquiring wealth are divided into two main classes, the uneconomical and the economical. From the social or national point of view it is uneconomical to have men acquiring wealth by methods which do not add to the total wealth or well-being of the society or the nation. When one man gains something by plundering, swindling, counterfeiting, or monopolizing, someone else loses a like amount, and nothing is added to the total. In fact, if these harmful methods become general, it is likely to discourage honest industry and actually diminish the total production of wealth. Even the neutral methods may become harmful if they result in wasted lives; that is, if they enable men and women who would otherwise be productive and useful to live in idleness and luxury. The smaller the proportion of the people who live by means of the uneconomical methods, the more prosperous the nation is likely to become.

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.

Economical ways of getting wealth. 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. 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.

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 support. They are also helped 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 yourselves 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.

The primary industries. The primary industries are themselves subdivided into two classes, the extractive and the genetic. Extractive industries are those which merely appropriate natural objects, without any attempt to replace what is taken or to keep up and increase the supply. The genetic industries, which might almost be called creative, are those primary industries which make a conscious effort to replace that which is taken, and to increase the supply. Thus, hunting wild animals and grazing domesticated animals on free ranges are extractive,