"In every case in which labour is exchanged for commodities, production really precedes enjoyment . . . wages are the earnings--that is to say, the makings--of labour--not the advances of capital." And the proposition which the author endeavours to disprove is the hitherto generally accepted doctrine ..."that labour is maintained and paid out of existing capital, before the product which constitutes the ultimate object is secured" (p. 16). The doctrine respecting the relation of capital and wages, which is thus opposed in "Progress and Poverty," is that illustrated in the foregoing pages; the truth of which, I conceive, must be plain to any one who has apprehended the very simple arguments by which I have endeavoured to [170] demonstrate it. One conclusion or the other must be hopelessly wrong; and, even at the cost of going once more over some of the ground traversed in this essay and that on "Natural and Political Rights,"* I propose to show that the error lies with "Progress and Poverty"; in which work, so far as political science is concerned, the poverty is, to my eye, much more apparent than the progress. * Collected Essays, vol. i. pp. 359-382. To begin at the beginning. The author propounds a definition of wealth: "Nothing which nature supplies to man without his labour is wealth" (p. 28). Wealth consists of "natural substances or products which have been adapted by human labour to human use or gratification, their value depending upon the amount of labour which, upon the average, would be required to produce things of like kind" (p. 27). The following examples of wealth are given:-- . . . "Buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and mineral products, manufactured goods, ships, waggons, furniture, and the like" (p. 27).