_Work._--If all the things man has need of were in unlimited number, and if they could be acquired without effort, there would be no property. This, for example, takes place in the case of the atmosphere, of which we all have need, but which belongs to no one. But if the question is of things that cannot be _acquired_ except by a certain effort (as in the case of animals running wild), or even that can be _produced_ only by human effort (as a harvest in a barren ground), these things belong by right to him who conquers them or brings them about. "I take wild wheat into my hand, I sow it in soil I have dug, and I wait for the earth, aided by rain and sunshine, to do its work. Is the growing crop my property? Where would it be without me? I created it. Who can deny it?... This earth was worth nothing and produced nothing: I dug the soil; I brought from a distance friable and fertilizing earth; I enriched it with manure; it is now fertile for many years to come. This fertility is my work.... The earth belonged to no one; in fertilizing it, I made it mine. According to Locke, nine tenths at least of the produce of the soil should be attributed to human labor."[20] It has been said that work is not a sufficient foundation to establish the right of property; that occupation must be added thereto, for otherwise work alone would make us the proprietors of what is already occupied by others; the farmer would become the proprietor of the fields he cultivates from the fact alone that he cultivates them. Occupation is therefore a necessary element of property. Certainly; but occupation itself has no value except as it already represents labor, and inasmuch as it is labor. The fact of culling a fruit, of seizing an animal, and even of setting foot upon a desert land, is an exercise of my activity which is more or less easy or difficult to accomplish, but which in reality is not the less the result of an effort. It is, then, work itself which lays the foundation of occupation and consecrates it. But when the thing once occupied has become the property of a man by a first work, it can no longer without contradiction become the property of another by a subsequent work. This work applied to the property of others is not the less itself the foundation of property, namely: the price received in exchange of work, which is called _salary_, and which again by exchange can obtain for us the possession of things not ours. =33. Accumulation and transmission.=--The right of _appropriation_, founded as we have just seen on work, carries with it as its consequence, the right of _accumulation_ and that of _transmission_.