Suppose an island where there is a lot of salt in mines near the surface, but with very poor pasture and very little of it; most of the soil barren and the climate bad. On the main-land, a day’s journey from the island, there is good soil and pasture and a good climate, but there is no salt. Salt is a prime necessity of life, and it comes into a lot of things besides necessaries. To the people of the main land, therefore, salt, which they lack, is of high value. To the people of the island it is of low value, for they can get as much of it as they want, with very little trouble. Meanwhile, meat is of very high value to the people of the island, who can grow little of it on their own soil, while it is of much less value to the people of the main-land, who have plenty of it through their good pastures and climate. Here we have, let us say, 100 tons of salt in the island and 100 tons of meat on the main-land. A boat takes the 100 tons of salt from the island to the main-land and brings back the meat from the main-land to the island. Here wealth has been created on both sides, although no change has taken place in the articles themselves except a change in position. Both parties, the islanders and the main-land people, are wealthier through the transaction, and this is a case where _exchange_ is a direct creator of wealth, and the transport effecting the exchange is a creator of wealth. Strictly speaking, everything done to increase the usefulness of an object right up to the moment when consumption begins is part of the production of wealth. For instance, wealth is being produced from the moment that wheat is sowed in the ground to the moment when the baked loaf is ready for eating, and the wealth expressed by the loaf, that is, the values attaching to it, are made up by all the processes of adding values from the first moment the seed was sown. When you eat a sixpenny loaf you are beginning to consume values created by the sowing of the wheat and its culture and its harvesting and grinding, and the working of the flour into dough, and the baking, and created by every piece of transport in the process, the carting of the sheaf into the rick, the carting thrashed wheat to the mill, the taking of the flour to the baker, the taking of the baked loaf to your house, and even the bringing of the loaf from the larder to your table. Every one of these actions is part of the production of wealth. There is attaching to the process of the production of wealth a certain character which we appreciate easily in some cases, but with much more difficulty in others. We have already come across it in discussing Capital. It is this: _All wealth is consumed._ This is universally true of all wealth whatsoever, though the rate of consumption is very different in different cases.