ABSTRACT
Political economy, or economics as it is now more popularly called, is concerned with wealth, its production, its distribution, and its consumption. A comparison of social conditions in the year 1800 with those of the year 1900 proves that there has been a gradual improvement in the distribution of wealth and a growing appreciation of those tendencies and laws the observance of which can do so much in the promotion of the higher side of human nature. Given a man who possesses a good motor-car, one or two fine houses, a good business, and a satisfactory banking account, there, says the ordinary individual, is wealth. There are some economists who would include certain abstract qualities in the wealth of the individual or of the community, energies, skill, habits, and mental attainments. Man can accumulate wealth and he can add more value to existing forms of wealth.
