The goods whose value is due to exceptional craftsmanship--such as an illuminated manuscript, for example, or a vase by Benvenuto Cellini--are always few in number, and can be possessed by the few only.

The distinctive feature of wealth-production in the modern world, on the contrary, is the multiplication of goods relatively to the number of the producers of them, and the consequent cheapening of each article individually.

The skill of the craftsman gives an exceptional value to the particular articles on which his own hands are engaged.

It does not communicate itself to the labour of the ordinary men around him.

The agency which causes the increasing and sustains the increased output of necessaries, comforts, and conveniences in the progressive nations of to-day must necessarily be an agency of some kind or other which raises the productivity of industrial exertion as a whole.