For instance, we in this country put into our standard of necessity clothes of a rather complicated pattern. We should not tolerate the poorest people going about in blankets. They must have boots on their feet, which take a lot of labour and material. We should not tolerate the poorest people going about barefooted, as they do in many other countries, nor even with sandals. It is not our custom. They may die of wet feet through bad leather boots and bad, thin clothing of our complicated pattern, but they must not wear wooden shoes or walk barefoot or go about in blankets. Again, we do not live on anything at random, but upon cooked meat and a certain special kind of grain called wheat. There are some grains much cheaper than wheat; but our custom demands wheat even for the poorest, if there is not enough wheat there is a famine, and famine is preferred by society to the giving up of the wheat standard. Again, we insist upon even the poorest having a certain amount of protection against the weather in the way of houses, which must be up to a certain standard. We do not tolerate their living in holes in the ground or mud huts. One way and another we have set up a certain _standard of subsistence_ even for the poorest; _and every community in history has, at all times, lived under this idea of a_ MINIMUM STANDARD OF SUBSISTENCE. This is so true that people will suffer great inconvenience, even to famine, as I have said, rather than give up the standard of subsistence. When people are too poor to afford this least amount of what we think necessaries effort is made to supply them by doles or a poor rate, or something of that kind; but the standard is not abandoned. Well, this _Minimum Standard of Subsistence_ is the first division in the Wealth produced. The prosperous man, tilling his own land and possessed of his own capital, consumes, of course, much more than the bare standard of subsistence would allow. He eats more food and better food, and has more and better clothes and house room and fuel and the rest than the mere standard of subsistence of his civilisation demands. Nevertheless, even in his case the standard of subsistence is there. It is a minimum below which, if things went wrong, he would not fall. Ask him to fall below it and he would simply fail to do so. He would try to produce that minimum amount of wealth in some other way, or if he could not do that he would die.