tilizing the articles to be eaten.
Each desire adds to the range of articles which may enter our list of
objects of wealth until enumeration is impossible. None of these, however,
will be stored as wealth beyond the limits of anticipated use: if so
stored, they add nothing to the supposed wealth. An isolated family, able
to consume only thirty bushels of potatoes in a season, is not more
wealthy from having three hundred bushels stored: the wealth is measured
by actual relations to wants not otherwise supplied. Even in a populous
city, the three hundred bushels of potatoes become a store of wealth only
when other people need them and _are able in turn to meet other wants of
the owners_.

Indeed, we soon come to estimate any object of wealth according to its
power, directly or indirectly, to meet the first want that comes. A
cherished memento of friendship may be ever so gratifying, and yet find no
place in our account of wealth, because it can serve no purpose in meeting
other wants.

Any object of wealth may cease to be counted, not because it has changed,
but because wants have changed. The last year's bonnet goes for a song,
because the fashion changes; the reaper rots behind the barn or at the
roadside, because the harvester is wanted in its place. So the wealth in
any object is limited by its relation to the present or prospective wants
of its owner, and his control to meet these wants. The wealth of any
community is its store of material objects suited to the current wants or
fitted to exchange with other communities for more suitable articles of
use. We estimate it only by thinking of uses in producing pleasure or
preventing pain, its limitations in quantity to a certain range of wants,
and its control for use or transfer by an owner.

_Wealth distinguished from power._--Wealth is not to be confused with power
of other kinds. Power may be for future exertion; wealth is the result of
exertion. Power may take any form of welfare,--health, wisdom, character,
as well as wealth. So no personal abilities can be counted as wealth,
however useful they may be as means of gaining it. Jenny Lind's abilities
as a singer may have been better than wealth; but exertion of those
abilities in the United States enabled her to carry back to Europe wealth
of which she had none before coming. The ingenuity of Elias Howe exerted
upon the sewing machine has been an immense source of wealth and welfare
to the world, but it alone could