It constitutes but a small percentage of the total wealth of a country, and it is far from being the most indispensable to human welfare.

Yet its importance, as a whole, in determining the form of industrial organization is enormous.

In a society without money, industrial processes would be very different, and trade would be hampered in manifold ways.
A poor community has little money because it cannot afford more; it gets along with less money than is convenient just as it gets along with fewer agents of every other kind that it could use.

Pioneers in a poor community where the average wealth is low cannot afford to keep a large number of wagons, plows, good roads, or schoolhouses.

If the members of the community were wealthy enough each would have more of these and of other things, and the sum total of money would be greater.