All true charity, even equity, requires that the object of distribution of wealth shall be the greater efficiency of each individual. If there shall ever be a community of individuals gaining equal enjoyment, it will be made up of those possessing essential equality in personal powers and attainments, and in accumulated capital as well.
_Simple association._--While the absolute equality of individuals referred to in the preceding chapter is practically impossible, the community of interests as civilization advances becomes much closer through various plans of association of individuals in common work. Indeed, the community is a community because a multitude of individuals work together. The simplest form of association is seen where men work in gangs, all acting alike, as in lifting a log or a rock, hoeing the field, or in building an embankment by shoveling. Among farmers the habit of exchanging work, so common in pioneer settlements, illustrates the advantage of combination. This may be called simple association, by which many hands make light work.
_Complex association._--A more complex association is found in even the rudest settlement when one man undertakes a particular kind of labor for all his neighbors, they in turn doing a different kind of work for him. A farmer in a new settlement found the children of himself and neighbors without a school, and agreed for several winters to teach a school as many days as his neighbors would chop in his clearing. This association cleared the land and supplied the school. Such exchanges of labor develop rapidly in every growing community and form the basis of a most extensive commerce. When "Adam delved and Eve span" the family was far better provided for than if both had undertaken to delve and spin. The fair exchange of products makes each man's product more useful to both himself and his neighborhood. Such association is less noticeable in a community of farmers, where all are seeking essentially the same products, than in almost any other community. Yet the presence of the blacksmith, the shoemaker, the wagonmaker and the tailor contribute very largely to the comfort of all concerned.
One chief disadvantage of farms remote from villages is the want of ready exchange, or association by different employments. The part which such exchange plays in the accumulation and distribution of the wealth of the world is so great that several chapters will be needed to present its importance. The study of exchanges is sometimes thought to cover the whole question of wealth. It is often treated as separate from production. But its advantages and disadvantages are most easily seen by considering all its bearings upon the increased product of a multitude of workers.