10. Again, this subject intimately concerns man in his governmental relations. For governments must furnish many of the conditions for the best economical results. Then, too, the great moral enterprises of the age, and of all ages, have to do with the principles here involved; education, pauperism, vicious social usages, the dangerous classes, have to be considered, and can only rightly be considered in the light of these truths. It is wonderful how closely this study is connected with all the great interests of humanity. Whole communities which have been impoverished and demoralized by neglecting some of the obvious principles of political economy, have revived and prospered under their application. Portions of our own country are examples of both these kinds of effects, and that, too, within the memory of men now living.
We shall follow the usual plan of the division of the subject under the heads of _production, consumption, exchange and distribution_.
1. _Production is the creation of value by rendering the utilities of nature available to man._ The creation, it will be noticed, is not of matter but of value. There are two great agencies which must co-operate in production—_nature_ and _man_. Man furnishes labor; nature furnishes materials and forces. The former would be useless without the latter. There must be soils, and mines, and trees, and animals, or no matter how much labor there may be, there can be no grain, nor fruit, nor metals, nor lumber; no houses and no meat, nor hides nor leather. So also there may be all kinds of material, but without labor they are of no available service to man.
2. But nature furnishes not only materials but also forces to aid man in his productive efforts. The more obvious and palpable of these are gravitation, especially in falling water, wind, the explosive property of gunpowder and dynamite, the expansive power of steam, magnetism, electricity, and the forces of vegetation. There are also numerous passive powers, or properties of matter which, when adapted by man, give him much advantage; such are the mechanical powers of the lever, inclined plane, wheel and axle, pulley and wedge, and those qualities of the metals which render them capable of taking an edge for cutting purposes, as also malleability, ductility, elasticity, etc. It is a beneficent fact of nature that she furnishes these materials and forces gratuitously. She is not churlish nor parsimonious in this respect. The more we avail ourselves of her help, the more ready she is to help us; and the greater the advantage we obtain, the more lavishly she bestows her gifts upon us.