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THE PRESENT' ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AND OUTLOOK 407
surveying iJdustry is too sweeping, because it lumps
togethtr primary and secondary industries, productive
and unproductive, productive and distributive, inde-
pendent and dependent, and so on; whereas the in-
dustries of a community are not in fact all on an equal
footing, and those that are" primary," II productive,"
and" independent" come before the others. If an in-
dustrial community has pot a sufficient share of these,
it is said and thought, it cannot exist at all. I must
maintain, however, in agreement, I believe, with the
best economic authorities, that these distinctions have
no foundation in the nature of things economically
considered. The one condition necessary to separate
existence is the ability to obtain abroad certain things
which are in fact required by a given community.
Thus a garrison town exists with a population three
or four times that of the garrison itself, and whose ex-
penditure, out of means brought to it alJ extra, enables
the whole town to procure the foreign things it wants.
I n the same way such "pleasure" towns as Brighton,
Bournemouth, Hastings, Eastbourne, Southport and
Scarborough, and a large district of country like Eng-
land south of the Thames, with hardly any" primary"
industries, subsist by means of wealthy residents who
procure from outside not only the means of employing
the local population, but the means of giving to that
population all that it wants alJ utra. Populations like
those of Klondyke and other mining districts are even
more instructive in their character. A single primary
industry enables such a community to obtain from
abroad what it requires, including a great deal with
which it might and would supply itself but for the
very productiveness of the primary industry itself. Of
course a great state requires much more to he politic-
al1'y as well as industrially independent; it is so far
unlike a small community which is only concerned
with its economic independence; but.the principle is
the same as far as the economics of die question are
concerned. The things we have to see to in dealing