It is not assumed here, as so constantly asserted by Ruskin, that men are and must be treated as rogues. The argument of Ruskin was that the qualifications to be introduced into problems due to the fact that man is not an economic man, are not like allowances for friction, or other mechanical matters, but are organic and revolutionary. The right reply probably is that sometimes this is so, but far more generally not so.
When remarkable instances of unselfishness occur outside the family circle, where the economist expects and allows for them, they are told as instances of the unexpected. When the newspaper boys near the Mansion House are found giving an undisturbed beat to a lame boy who could not compete with them in running to customers, and refuse to sell a paper there, the admiring customer concludes his beautiful and kindly story by asking how many business men round the Mansion House would leave a rival in possession because of his weakness?
The definition of Wealth must now be considered. Mill defines it as consisting of “All useful and agreeable things which possess exchangeable value.”
He decides to include in the wealth of a country such personal qualities, skill, energy, perseverance, as tend to make the man who possesses them industrially more valuable. A skilled cotton spinner is a greater national asset than a labourer; a skilled medical man who can restore to labourers their industrial efficiency, is also national wealth, a utility embodied in a person; but a gifted preacher, whose message may even make a man a less keen producer of wealth than he was before, would not be an instance of national wealth, unless he made, as he might, a drunkard or a loafer into a regular wage earner. So the actor, or the singer, or the orator, unless their work ultimately produces material goods, is not to be counted wealth in economics. There is evidently the usual difficulty about drawing the line.
What is more, the most precious parts of character are excluded from national wealth in the economic sense. Wealth, that is, is taken to mean property, and not, more generally, the means of true well-being. Again, the most necessary things are from their abundance not wealth. Air, sunshine, and water are not wealth where and when they are given profusely by nature; though they are the most needful supports to life. But air which has to be pumped in by a ventilating fan has cost something, and is wealth; sunshine which has passed through a coal measure and is brought to our firegrates on a winter’s night is wealth, water turned on at our taps is wealth for which we pay a water-rate. We may come to import oxygen into our halls and theatres and lecture rooms, perhaps even into our cellar workrooms, and then it too will have a price and an economic value.