Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/84

 more useful approximations of the economic field than the highly colored picture of the sacred hen. They are, at any rate, easier to deal with in scientific terms which can be generally applied.

We have found then that our only measurable factors are population, land-area and time; and realizing that these define density, volume and duration of effort, with the very general conception of the unquenchable human desire for individual freedom as the motive force, the interest of the engineer is further quickened. Economics begins to have some of the familiar aspects of a science.

To approach economics with a tally-sheet for population, a steel tape for measuring area and a trustworthy chronometer, may appear completely heartless to a fervid sociologist; but it is no more heartless than the response by an intelligent administrator to an appeal from a fever-stricken district when he sends in a surveyor with his instruments with a view to drainage. For those whose children are tossing in fever, the benevolent quack, or sympathetic clergyman’s wife with chicken soup and jelly, may seem much more adequate response; but we have suffered in economics too much already from soup and jelly.

At any rate, we have reached the point where we have three measurable factors to work with. Now let us see whether the employment of these is rank heresy. As a matter of fact, Labor, including both mental and physical effort, has been validated by most of the sound economists. The only innovation proposed is to give it free way, as democracy designed, and measure it by population. Land-area, or room, has been specifically emphasized by Charles Gide. The value of this area with which the single-taxers are so much concerned is measured justly, not by appraisers in terms of a fluctuating unit of value, but, under democracy, by the free population attracted within its boundaries. The factor of Time has been put forward positively by Böhm-Bawerk, Jevons and Fisher.

If there is an appearance of heresy it is due to the fact that all imponderable factors have been rejected; and it is insisted that if the three factors, Labor, Land and Time, are basic they