Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/93

 streets and fell apart at a word into lumber and kindling, we might be justified in distinguishing these things from all other forms of matter by calling them natural bounties, even if we felt doubtful about calling them social products. As a point of elementary logic, if we reverently credit these realized advantages to the Creator, or to society, we should then, less reverently, debit to the same accounts the lost lives of prospectors who have died of thirst, the scattered savings of over hopeful mining investors, the costly dry wells of the oil operator, and the disastrous financial record of railroads which have prematurely reached out for timber and similar raw material. The clay of yesterday becomes the aluminum ore of tomorrow. Is this change due to natural bounty or human effort?

These things are neither “social products” nor spasmodic gifts of God. From an economic standpoint they are phases of our environment to be made available for use only by the expenditure of new mental or physical effort, governed by the limitation of time and the fixed area of land.

Gide, even though he uses Environment and Raw-material as factors, saw this clearly, and states, “thus even with wealth which is termed natural, labor is seen to be a real agent of production; for without it such objects would be virtually non-existent for us.”

Area, then, is measurable, and thus qualifies as a valid quantitative factor. Other land-values are not measurable; but it should be obvious that they contribute to the basic importance of land-area by attracting another accurately measurable factor—population—thus creating the clean resultant we desire, that is, occupancy-value.

When land, then, is spoken of here as one of the basic factors of value, it must be clearly understood that what is meant is