Resource

“ As workers you have some acquaintance with the natural resources of our country, and the ways in which they have been utilized in the production and distribution of commodities through the perfecting of industrial organization and the applying of science to work. ”

“ Unparalleled natural and human resources have energized every part of our society-from the agricultural heartland that feeds an international community; to the textile and steel mills that began the machine age in America; to the scientific, computer, and information companies that are leading the way into the fast-paced world of the 21st century. ”

“ Unparalleled resources, the fortuitous historical moment, the tide of immigration drawing on the best of the world, the implicit good in conception necessarily resultant in the explicit best of being; high purpose, inventive genius, exploratory urge, competitive spirit, fraternal enthusiasm, what does the ascription matter if the end product was clear for all to see? ”

“ The first Basic Fact—not first in order of creation, but first in our perceptions of Economic necessity—is Man. Without Man, Economics could have neither incentive nor power, neither cause nor effect.
The second Basic Fact is Natural Resources, without which Man could not exist. Natural Resources comprise the surface of our globe, together with all natural objects external to Man and in their natural condition, upon the surface, under the surface, and above the surface, including the air surrounding the surface. ”

“ The development of new resources, the opening of new paths to skill and labor, the discovery of new methods, the invention of new machinery and implements, and the employment of capital in new and useful pursuits—these are the objects which associations like this aim to accomplish. ”

“ They will study not only our natural resources, our material development and the productions of our industries, but the working of our political institutions, our morals, our customs, our manners, our ways of thinking, all the fruits of our civilization. ”

“ Natural resources had been discovered and exploited and the need was for conservation of what remained available. The forces of nature had been harnessed to human use. Industrial development had reached large proportions, and organization and division of labor in our economic order had gone so far that anyone who would could no longer go forth freely and do anything which a restless imagination and daring ambition suggested to him as a means of gain. ”

“ A study of our national resources, more comprehensive than any previously made, shows the vast amount of necessary and practicable work which needs to be done for the development and preservation of our natural wealth for the enjoyment and advantage of our people in generations to come. ”

“ The basic material resources, consisting of the materials of the earth's surface and the natural climatic conditions which together provide the physical conditions necessary for human existence, and which furnish the stuff out of which men can create new forms of wealth. ”

“ The experience of three thousand years had educated society to feel the vastness of Nature, and the infinity of her resources of power, but even this increase of attraction had not yet caused economies in its methods of pursuit. ”

“ And such are the resources of each in arts, in arms, in literature, in commerce, in manufactures, in the productions of the soil, and such their advanced position in the science of government, and such the ability and genius of their great men, that they must, for an indefinite period, exert a controlling influence on the destiny of mankind. ”

“ They will take our present resources, and make the best of them, no doubt, re-arranging and re-manipulating them, and making them go as far as they can. They will shape the whole thing out in wood, and the result will be wooden. ”

“ Give to those phenomena whatever name you please—my name for them is “natural law”—the fact nevertheless remains, a Basic Fact in Economics, that no Man nor any number of Men can produce Artificial Objects to or from any stage of the productive process except from and upon Natural Resources. ”

“ The process of human adaptation of Natural Resources to Artificial effects—or, to use the Economic term, the process of Production,—no matter how complex, is continuous from original conceptions in the human mind to completion and delivery of products to ultimate consumers by the human mind and hand. ”

“ I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. ”

“ First among these is a realization that our resources are measured in finite terms. We have begun to take account of what we have, and we are able in a rough way to figure the loss from what we have squandered. ”

“ All Economic details, the familiar and the unfamiliar, the obvious and the mysterious, the known and the unknown, generalize with precision into the three Basic Facts of Economics—Artificial Objects, Natural Resources and Man.
Natural Resources are the source and the indispensable condition at every stage, from beginning to end, in the production of every kind of satisfaction for human wants. Man is the active agent at all stages. Artificial Objects constitute the category into which each result generalizes at each stage of production. ”

“ When I see in these brave plants this vigor and immortality in weakness, I find a sudden relief and pleasure in observing the mighty law of vegetation, and I think it more grateful and health-giving than any news I am likely to find of man in the journals, and better than Washington politics.
It is easy to see that there is no limit to the chapter of Resources. I have not, in all these rambling sketches, gone beyond the beginning of my list. Resources of Man,—it is the inventory of the world, the roll of arts and sciences; it is the whole of memory, the whole of invention ”

“ The Economic student who mixes such Natural Resources as building sites with such Artificial Objects as buildings, or natural deposits of minerals with mining machinery, or natural surfaces with railway roadbeds and tracks and equipment, or farming tracts with farm improvements, or human slaves with real estate or stocks of merchandize or factory mechanisms, makes an inexcusable blunder. ”

“ As a rule each actor is brought upon the scene without in- troduction and the reader is also left to his own resources as to the lay of the ground, resources, climate, prior occupation of the region in which an economic beginning is to be at- tempted. ”

“ The three requisites of production, as has been so often repeated, are labour, capital, and land: understanding by capital, the means and appliances which are the accumulated results of previous labour, and by land, the materials and instruments supplied by nature, whether contained in the interior of the earth, or constituting its surface. ”

“ If these activities, which are essentially the activities characteristic of our modern civilization, be used to best advantage, they will offer many opportunities for making significant the other subjects.
Any considerable participation in the processes which are fundamental to the great industries cannot fail to arouse an interest in the source of materials, the development of the industry, and a desire to express one’s self with reference to the work which is being done. From the interest in the source of materials grows naturally the work in nature study and geography. ”

“ Passing now from the purely technical and material side of the problem of production, we come to the human factor, the motives leading men to work, the possibilities of efficient organization of production, and the connection of production with distribution. ”

“ In so far as the goods are products of industry, they are the output of this unfolding life of man, a material residue embodying a given fraction of this forceful life-process. In this life-process lies all substantial reality, and all finally valid relations of quantivalence between the products of this life-process must run in its terms. The life-process, which, when it takes the specific form of an expenditure of labor power, goes to produce goods, is a process of material forces, the spiritual or mental features of the life-process and of labor being only its insubstantial reflex. ”

“ How stores of food, of clothing, of fuel and of the materials for building may be collected and preserved; how present labor may be made to supply future wants, and the thought of future enjoyment be made to sweeten the present toil. How the means of instruction and of amusement may be secured. How all engaged in supplying one need of society co-operate with all who are engaged in supplying its other needs. ”

“ By the divine Purpose as expressed in the constitution of Nature, in the structure of Man, and in the laws of Society, Trade in good measure and degree imparts to each the bounties of all, arms each with the power of all, and impels each by the progress of all. ”

“ In relation to product it means any substance on which industry is to be exerted. In relation to industry, the material on which industry is about to confer value, that on which it has conferred value; the instruments which are used for the conferring of value, as well as the means of sustenance by which the being is supported while he is engaged in performing the operation.”—Elements of Political Economy, Book I, Chap. ”

“ This tone consisted chiefly in making the proper distinction between the laws of the Production of Wealth—which are laws of nature, dependent on the properties of objects—and the modes of its Distribution, which, subject to certain conditions, depend on human will. ”

“ Leaving the free forces of nature, surrounded by which we live and work, out of consideration, and also the fact that all raw material is due to nature, land is the indispensable foundation of all economy. ”

“ The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundations, on which rise legal and political superstructures and which correspond to definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. ”

“ The raw stuff that goes into food, clothing, furnishings, or the like will become consumers' goods, while the raw material of tools will, in its final form, the tools themselves, have one more lease of life as capital goods. ”

“ What do we say, in fact?
To determine value,—in other words, to organize within itself the production and distribution of wealth,—society proceeds exactly as the mind does in the generation of concepts. ”

“ All that the earth yields from her teeming surface, or from her deep-embowelled mines; all that enterprise can accomplish with exhaustless means, the best facilities, and the most stupendous objects; and all that genius can create, when stimulated by the richest rewards and the freest opportunities for untrammelled exertion, will supply us with the means and materials for an almost infinite variety of pursuits and occupations ”

“ These three elements, Nature, Labor, Capital, conspire in all production of commodities. Nature comes first with her free forces and materials; and then present toil aided by the results of past toil in the form of capital does all the rest in getting commodities ready to sell and selling them. ”

“ But these natural agents, though they add greatly to value in use, never add exchangeable value, of which M. Say is speaking, to a commodity: as soon as by the aid of machinery, or by the knowledge of natural philosophy, you oblige natural agents to do the work which was before done by man, the exchangeable value of such work falls accordingly. ”

“ When such extensive designs shall have been completed, the landowner, farmer, grazier, trader, manufacturer, and merchant will vie with each other, in the lasting benefit, splendour, and glory which such expanded views of science will send forth to the productive classes and the consumers of the production of the earth. ”

“ I trust that by the use of the term "economy" in speaking of what is observable in the works of the Creator, I shall be understood as comprehending both the avoidance of unnecessary and the exertion of all necessary power. Of the degree of necessity in any exercise of a power which we suppose to be infinite, we can only judge by what we can see. ”

“ From this early study I learned that, in the sphere of activity which absorbed most of the thought, interest, and energy of all our population, except a small leisure class, principles and laws governed the production and distribution of wealth which intelligent men and women accepted as belonging to the order of Nature. ”

“ By many hands, by many processes, through many stages, all forms of wealth are obtained by labor from the land. Food, clothing, fuel, machinery, buildings, capital are all results of men working on the materials of the earth. ”

“ Simply in that the economy I have taught, in opposition to the popular view, is the science which not merely ascertains the relations of existing demand and supply, but determines what ought to be demanded and what can be supplied. ”

“ In all this, economy is in unison with common sense and the good effect produced; for if you choose to introduce a profile that does not suit the material used, you will [Pg 178] give occasion to the employment of unusually difficult and consequently expensive processes, and your work appears painful, affected, and laborious. ”

“ All the marvellous results of physical effort in all the world have flowed from so simple a matter as the contraction and expansion of muscle; and the world of materials is so cunningly constructed, that, when these are moved into right position by human hands, or by some form of capital itself the result of previous human handling, the free powers of Nature do all the rest, and valuable commodities are the good outcome. ”

“ No doubt; for all knowledge, come whence it may,—from incalculable heights or unfathomable depths,—all new knowledge of the forces of nature affords the means of setting free a quantity of human labour to be turned to new purposes. ”

“ Nature, with unsurpassed lavishness, presented the raw material; it rested with man to stamp it with value. Thus the stimulus to industrial and commercial activities was second to none other in the history of nations. ”