Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/321



we have already arrived at is an expression of our total potentialities—the continuous effort toward freedom of our population, limited by area, with a full realization that the effective pressure of the population, and the economic quality of the political area (which in reality is the same thing), have been enhanced by the slow elimination of such obstacles as ignorance and bondage—physical, political and intellectual. There is no variable factor to be dealt with except increased population, and this can be measured. There has obviously been rearrangement of matter. Our rocks have broken down to clay, our clay has been made into bricks, and our bricks into houses which in turn preserve the health of our engineers and economists. Our engineers are being changed into economists and our economists into loyalists. It is all rearrangement, not all of which is profitable. Politically we have changed in that sealed areas of individual privilege have been broken down by revolution and resealed as soon as possible by the State Bureaus.

In considering the basic value of the pressure of population upon area in terms of dollars we have mentally reached the point at which, long ago, the scientist started in to devise a unit suitable for measuring what he called “work.” He was able to measure pressure per square inch, but, being practical, he realized that, before his calculations would carry him anywhere, he had to be able to measure the net effective value of that pressure when released under orderly conditions, and he promptly expressed it as the movement of one pound over a distance of one foot in one second,—the familiar foot-pound-