INTRODUCTORY

n

using the terms productive and unproductive in senses liable
to be misleading.
The productive energies of a community may be employed
 in providing for the immediate and direct satisfaction
of the wants of its members, or they may be partly devoted
to acquiring the means of providing for the anticipated
needs of the future. The resources of the community may
not be adequate for more than its most important needs, or
they may suffice for the provision of substantial comforts or
luxury, both present and future. It is clear that the lack of
necessaries must involve the cessation of supply of corresponding
 service. The interpretation of the word “necessaries”
is not, however, uniform. It is sometimes used with reference
to the physiological requirements for the maintenance of life,
or of life and health, If any section or class in society fail
to acquire these necessaries, it is a simple matter of the
interpretation of the terms employed to conclude that that
section or class cannot maintain its existence without such
change, of numbers or of resources as will ensure at least the
necessaries of existence to those who compose the class or
section in question. But experience shows that no class or
people, however narrow its resources, devotes the whole of
those resources, in the most effective manner, to the provision
of the most essential goods and services. In practice, some
commodities are consumed which add nothing to the support
of physical life, even at the expense of stinting the supplies
of food, or of equally essential parts of the daily consumption.
Thus there are found numerous instances where money is
spent in providing showy outside garments, though such
txpenditure compels an inadequate supply of warm underclothing,
 and even of food as well. The supply of resources
sufficient to provide for the physiological necessaries of
Existence does not, therefore, ensure that these necessaries
are secured, Other goods often take precedence, and such
goods, which, by the habits of life and standards of conduct
of sections of the community, rank before physical necessaries,
are known as “conventional necessaries.” A very apt ex-Pression
 of the practical distinction between the more and
less necessary expenditures has been given, in a definition