6. We come now in the last place to consider the _Costs of Production_ of material commodities of all sorts. Valuable patches of land, all prepared for Production in its several kinds, are the most important Commodities in the world, and the largest also in volume of Value. What did it cost "_to subdue_" the present tillable lands of this country? How much did it cost to get ready for grazing the broad pastures? To make accessible the forests that yield the timber? To open up the mines also and bring them into "touch" with the population? These questions are of great consequence, not that the actual past cost of any class of these more permanent "commodities" in the commercial world will be any safe guide to their present value, since cheaper and cheaper means of subduing the rugged forms of Nature are all the while coming into play, and all things that did cost more once tend pitilessly to fall to what similar things cost now; and since also it is never "efforts" alone that determine the value of anything, but efforts in conjunction with the "desires" of other men. Still, the _amount_ of efforts expended at any given time upon these more stable commodities to make them productive, that is, their cost of production, is always gauged in general by an _estimate_ of what the "desires" for them will be when completed; and this makes their cost of production a sort of loose measure of their value at the time. The main reason, however, why the cost of production of these primal commodities, namely, valuable land-patches, whatever may be expected to be produced from them afterwards, is so important, is, that as a general rule, the less the cost of any commodity meeting a universal want _the wider and surer is its market_. The larger the circle of the buyers of anything the more certain its sale; because, the world over, the men of small incomes are manifold larger in number than the men of large incomes. Society is like a pyramid: the lowest course of masonry is the longest and widest,--has the most stones or bricks in it,--and ever fewer towards the top.