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4 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [CHar. I 
ually change owners. Again, many writers, like McLeod, 
omit the qualifier “material” altogether, in order to 
make room for the inclusion of such “immaterial wealth” 
as stocks, bonds, and other property rights, and for human 
and other services. Property and services are, it is true, 
inseparable from wealth, and wealth from them, but they 
are not wealth. To embrace all these under one term 
involves a species of triple counting. A railway, a railway 
share, and a railway trip are not three separate items of 
wealth; they are respectively wealth, a title to that 
wealth, and a service of that wealth. Fimally, a few econo- 
mists, like Tuttle, have endeavored to break away from 
concrete objects entirely. The term “ wealth,” they main- 
tain, applies, not to the concrete objects, but to the value 
of these objects. Much may be said in support of this 
contention. But as the question is chiefly verbal, that is, 
not a question of finding a suitable concept, but of finding 
a suitable word for a concept, it does not seem advisable 
to depart from the prevailing usage among economists. 
Wealth, then, includes all those parts of the material 
universe which have been appropriated to the uses of 
mankind. It does not include the sun, moon, or stars, 
because no man owns them. It is confined to this little 
planet, and only to parts of that; namely, the appropriated 
portions of the earth’s surface and the appropriated objects 
upon it. The appropriation need not be complete; 
it is often only partial and for a particular purpose, 
as in the case of the Newfoundland Banks, which are appro- 
priated only in the sense that the fishermen of certain 
nations have the right to take fish in their vicinity, while 
their waters are open to all men for all other purposes. 
In fact, it is doubtful if there are any objects owned so 
unrestrictedly that the owner of them may use them in 
absolute defiance of the wishes of others. By appropriation 
of any object is therefore meant that degree of appropria- 
tion to which the object is subjected.