During this period some manufactured commodities would have been destroyed and replaced 15 times, others 10 times, still others 5 times, etc., depending on the span of life allotted to each, in order for it to earn sufficient for its purpose before it dies. We must work on the principle of nature, which creates and destroys, and carries the process of elimination and replacement through the ages. There would be no overproduction, were this method adopted, for production and consumption would be regularized and adjusted to each other, and it would no longer be necessary to send our surplus goods to find outlet in foreign markets. We would not then, as we do today, have to sell these goods on credit and later have to beg for our money, which in the long run foreign nations do not want to repay anyway. In the description of things under the present organization of society, we continually make use of a system of weights and measures. Thus, a commodity is evaluated in terms of size—shape, weight, value, etc. The weights and measures we use are standardized and regulated by the Government so that they may not be violated. But, though we may not realize it, this system is incomplete because in the description of things it omits consideration of two elements which are equal in importance to those in everyday use in determining real values. These are _life_ and _time_, life with respect to the commodity produced, and time, the period it should last. If we add the elements of life and time to our measurement of what we produce, and say that the life of this automobile shall be not more than 5 years, or the life of this building shall last not more than 25 years, then, with the addition of our customary measurement of these commodities, we will have a really complete description of them right from the beginning. And, when capital purchases the automobile or the building, it will be doing so only for that limited period of years, after which the remaining value left in the product will revert to labor, which produced it in the first place, and which thus will receive its rightful share in the end, even if it did not do so in the beginning. Miracles do not happen. They must be planned in order to occur. Similarly in this time of economic crisis, we must work out our own salvation. If we can afford to sink ships, that cost millions of dollars to construct, merely for the purpose of giving target practice to the gunner, then surely we can afford to destroy other obsolete and useless products in order to give work to millions and pull the country out of the dire catastrophe in which it is now wallowing.