The Elements of Political Economy

Seitenzahl:

250

Gewicht:

372 g

Erschienen bei:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Kurzbeschreibung

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. DIMINISHING RETURNS FROM NATURAL AGENTS. 15. Under natural agents are included not merely land, but minerals under the surface, water-power, and similar gifts of Nature. The wealth of a country depends largely on the natural resources of its climate, soil, and mines. The rugged mountains which run southwest from Pennsylvania to Alabama are nearly useless for cultivation, but they abound in coal and iron and limestone; while new prairie lands, where there are no mines, yield grain with little exertion. Then the nearness of mines of coal and iron to rivers or to the sea adds greatly to their capacity for producing wealth. " England's present position in the world is in a great measure due to the fact that she not only has coal-mines and iron-mines, but also her coal and iron mines are near together." In the United States, the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the St. Lawrence, and the Great Lakes, are means of producing goods more cheaply, since it is part of production to transport goods to a place where they are wanted. The raw materials of every industry come from the soil in one form or another. A lead-pencil gets its covering of wood from the cedar-forests, its black-lead from mines, and its paint from lead ground with oil made from hemp- seed. But, generally speaking, the greatest source of all products is land, for almost everything comes from the Marshall, "Economics of Industry," p. 9. land. Therefore, we shall speak mainly of land in discussing natural agents, and use it as representing a class of things. 16. In order to learn how more wealth can be produced, so that the world may become richer, we must seek the rules according to which each of the requisites of production permits such an increase. Unless we consider how each factor can increase, ...

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Mehr von:  James Laurence Laughlin, Cambridge Scholars Publishing