still have the advantage." According to Seager, production and distribution in the modern community can be analysed, and graphically pictured, by distinguishing three more basic branches of production: the extractive industries, which supply materials, the manufacturing industries, which combine and fashion materials into the forms desired by consumers, and transportation and trade, which bring manufactured goods to those who are to use them. About the basic interaction, Seager further explained: "As represented in the above figure the three great branches of production are being carried on simultaneously and the goods produced are flowing in a vast stream from the extractive industries, where they originate as materials, to traders who dispose of them in finished forms either to consumers or to producers who use them as capital goods or aids to further production. Although working contemporaneously, successive groups of producers are, of course, engaged on materials previously produced by those employed at the preceding stages. Manufacturers are manufacturing materials turned out somewhat earlier by the extractive industries and transporters and traders are handling goods previously manufactured. The iron ore and the coal that are being mined to-day will come together in blast furnaces and steel mills some weeks or months hence ; the resulting steel will be fashioned into axes, ploughs, building frames, etc., some weeks or months after it has been reduced to ingots or rolled into bars ; these steel products will contribute to the satisfaction of the wants of consumers at a still later period. The average time taken, as production is now organised in the United States, to convert raw material into consumable commodities cannot be accurately measured, but it is certain that it runs into months and probable that it exceeds a year. The vast majority who are at work on any given day help to produce materials or unfinished commodities." Value, Price, and Distribution In the chapter about "Value, Price, and Distribution" Seager explains, that his model of the modern production and distribution can be used to "restate the laws determining rent, wages, and interest." He stated: "It will be necessary to advert for the last time the relations that would prevail in an industrial society brought Production to the state of normal equilibrium. In such a society the relation between production, distribution, and consumption would be extremely simple. Production would still be carried on as a serial process, but it could be readily analysed,