s
the product of nature--a crop. Moving food and water to the steers, or the
steers to food and water, under proper conditions of warmth, air and
exercise, produces beef. To know how and when and where to move things so
that nature may meet our wishes by what always happens under the same
circumstances, would be to have all the arts of life; in short, production
is the art of moving things. But we distinguish different kinds of
production according to the direct results expected from our motion, as
reducing space and time, modifying the form, or changing the substantial
qualities of things handled.

_Transportation in production._--The change of place necessary to bring
together wants and those things which satisfy them is a method of
producing wealth most apparent everywhere. The bringing of wild fruits
from the forest or the swamp to the home gives them worth. The mere
transportation, change of place, gives them an importance they did not
have on the trees or bushes. In this transportation we put the energy
necessary to take grain from the fields all the way to the bake-ovens, and
finally to our mouths, or to carry the milk from the stable or yard in
pail, can, wagon, train, delivery cart and bottle, to the lips of the
child whose life it maintains. Every kind of material or force expended in
this process of overcoming space is used in the idea that the object is
worth the expenditure in the place finally reached. If the motion stops
anywhere along the way, the wealth is not obtained, or at least is held
only in expectation until the motion can be completed. While each of fifty
individuals may give a hand, and pass his claim to the next for a
consideration, the wealth is all the way increasing in anticipation, as
the object comes nearer its use.

In this progress time as well as space is an important obstacle to be
overcome, and we employ all means of increasing speed, or preserving
against what we call "the ravages of time," i. e., the operation of
injurious forces acting in time upon most material substances. The methods
employed for storing, curing and forcing to maturity the various forms of
food needed in a community are aimed at meeting this obstacle, and add to
its final worth; indeed these may be the means of giving value to all the
other efforts in transportation, as in moving beef from Kansas City to New
York, or fresh fruit from San Francisco to Boston.

In the same process of putting things where they ar