re likely to lose sight of the essential
individuality of wants and exertions which make wealth possible, because
in any community exchange of services modifies the direct relation of each
man's wants to his accumulations. Assuming that others, wanting food, will
exchange clothing for it, one man stores food alone, but in quantities far
beyond his own need, measuring its relation to all his material wants
through the wants and exertions of others. He feels even more sure of the
continued activity of wants and powers among a multitude than if he had
but one neighbor; but individuals, after all, must need his products and
exert themselves to meet the need, or all his calculations fail.

_Progress in welfare._--Economic progress must show a larger welfare to
individuals of the community. The familiar figure by which a commonwealth
is compared to an animal organism fails to include the important fact that
the individuals of the commonwealth furnish the only reason for the
existence of the commonwealth itself, as well as its only means of
existence. The cells of the animal, or even the most important organs,
have no reason for existence in themselves. Each individual man furnishes
the reasons for his activity, and the needs of individual men furnish the
only reason for having a commonwealth.

We can speak of progress, then, only when these individuals secure a
better use of wealth in some way. It may be by accumulation through saving
from the full years for the empty, as older communities can endure a
drought with little suffering, while pioneers are ruined. It may be by an
increased product for a given exertion, as illustrated by every
labor-saving implement upon the farm or in the factory. It may be by
lessening exertion for a given product, as in the devices of kitchen and
dairy to make tasks lighter. It may be in better distribution of the total
product through readier and fairer exchanges of services or products, as
happens with every improvement in transportation and every means for
fairer understanding in a bargain. Lastly, it may be in more economical
expenditure for common wants, as in maintaining government machinery.
Usually, progress has been marked along several of these lines at once, if
not all of them. There is reason in the statement of Charles Francis Adams
that the last century far exceeds the gain of a thousand years before.

_Production, distribution, consumption._--Full consideration of rural
wealth as