But a bag of wheat, an ingot of iron, a quintal of coal--are they the produce of labor?
Did not Nature create them ?" The PROTECTIONIST: "Without doubt Nature _creates_ the _elements_ of all things; but it is labor which produces their _value_.

I was wrong myself in saying that labor creates material objects, and this faulty phrase has led the way to many other errors.
It does not belong to man, either manufacturer or cultivator, to _create_, to make something out of nothing; if, by _production_, we understand _creation_, all our labors will be unproductive; that of merchants more so than any other, except, perhaps, that of law-makers.
The farmer has no claim to have _created_ wheat, but he may claim to have created its _value_: he has transformed into wheat substances which in no wise resembled it, by his own labor with that of his ploughmen and reapers.

What more does the miller effect who converts it into flour, the baker who turns it into bread?
Because man must clothe himself in cloth, a host of operations is necessary.

Before the intervention of any human labor, the true raw materials of this product (cloth) are air, water, gas, light, the chemical substances which must enter into its composition.

These are truly the raw materials which are _untouched by human labor_; therefore, they are of no _value_, and I do not think of protecting them.