The Instinct Of Workmanship And The State Of The Industrial Arts

In the ordinary course, it should seem, such an advance in the industrial arts as will result in an accumulation of wealth, a considerable and efficient industrial equipment, or in a systematic and permanent cultivation of the soil or an extensive breeding of herds or flocks, will also bring on ownership and property rights bearing on these valuable goods, or on the workmen, or on the land employed in their production. What has seemed the most natural and obvious beginnings of property rights, in the view of those economists who have taken an interest in the matter, is the storing up of valuables by such of the ancient workmen as were enabled, by efficiency, diligence or fortuitous gains, to produce somewhat more than their current consumption.