The motive of production is to satisfy human needs, and the simplest case of production is that of a man working for himself and his family as a settler in a new country. He cuts down wood and brings it where it is wanted; he builds a hut and a bridge with it; he stacks it ready to burn for fuel. The wealth he thus produces by his labour goes to him and his, and because the labour he has to expend is what impresses him most about the process, he calls the wealth produced at the end of it: “Wealth produced by his labour.” He thinks of his labour as the one agent of the whole affair, and so it is the one immediate _human_ agent; but, as we have seen, there are two other agents as well. His mere labour (that is, the use of his brain and his muscles) would not have produced a pennyworth of wealth, but for two other agents: Natural Forces (or Land) and Capital. And we shall find when we look into it that the wealth he thus produces and regards as one thing is also really divided into three divisions: one corresponding to each of the three agents which produce wealth. Being a settler living by himself and possessing his own land and his own implements, he controls all he produces and does not notice the three divisions. But three divisions there are none the less present in all wealth produced anywhere, =and these three divisions do not correspond to the moral claim man has to the result of his labour=. They are divisions produced by the working of economic law, which is as blind and indifferent to right and wrong as are the ordinary forces of nature about us. These three divisions are called =RENT=, =INTEREST= (or =Profit=) and =SUBSISTENCE=. In order to see how these three divisions come about we must take them in the order of _Subsistence_ first, then _Interest_, then _Rent_. 1. SUBSISTENCE. In any civilisation you will find a certain amount of things which are regarded as necessaries. In any civilisation it is thought that human beings must not be allowed to sink below a certain level, and a certain amount of clothes of a certain pattern, a certain amount of housing room and fuel, and a certain amount of food of a certain kind are thought the very least upon which life can be conducted. Even the poorest are not allowed to fall below that standard. This does not mean that no one is allowed to starve or die of insufficient warmth. It means that any particular civilisation (our own, for instance, or the Chinese) has its regulation minimum and lets men die rather than fall below it. This “certain amount,” below which even the poorest people’s livelihood is not allowed to fall, is called =THE STANDARD OF SUBSISTENCE=. Most people when they first think of these things imagine that there is some very small amount of necessaries which, all over the world, and at all times, would be thought absolutely essential to man. But it is not so. The standard set is always higher than the mere necessity of keeping alive would demand.