Resources

“ CHAPTER XXXII THE TREND OF CIVILIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES
The Economic Outlook.—The natural resources of forest, mines, and agriculture are gradually being depleted. The rapidity of movement in the economic world, the creation of wealth by vast machinery, and the organization of labor and industry are drawing more and more from the wealth stored by nature in her treasure-houses. ”

“ But no central organization or institution can be expected to do the work which, at the outset, the local industries must initiate for themselves and develop by their own resources, and direct by the light of the consciousness of their distinctive needs. ”

“ By such means society might obtain from its existing resources a greater quantity of produce: and to such means it has been driven, when the sudden destruction of some large portion of its capital rendered the employment of the remainder with the greatest possible effect, a matter of paramount consideration for the time. ”

“ 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. ”

“ These forces are now busily engaged in developing the resources of the country, in cultivating the soil, working the mines, operating the industries, carrying on the commerce, or in looking after the development of the mental powers and the enlightenment of the people, whereby their producing powers may be still further increased. ”

“ Where crops were spoiling for a market, farmers were not disposed to inquire into the mysteries of high finance and the nature of public credit. All doubts were laid to rest by the magic phrase "natural resources." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is it not time to turn from the perspective of history to the realities of the present day economic organizations? Here, in the twentieth century, civilization of the Western World is an economic system which automatically turns into the coffers of those who control the natural resources (forests, ore, coal, fertile land) an endless stream of wealth. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let me tell you that if the government only knew how to develop its resources, and had the power to do so, our mineral wealth would afford the means of increasing a hundredfold our prosperity, and the number of our inhabitants. ”

“ The time has come when the nation must consider the nature of its resources, and study its own development. We must see to it that the demand for houses, the primary demand of a civilized man, is answered, not by the speculative builder, but by the nation itself. ”

“ The government should, by general enactments, encourage the development of our agricultural, mineral, mechanical, manufacturing, and commercial resources, to the end that labor may be fully and profitably employed ”

“ The economic resources of the world will be organized, its sources of raw materials will be tapped and fully utilized, its markets will be co-ordinated and developed, and the distribution of its products will be equitably regulated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Recognizing the natural resources of the country as the prime basis of property and opportunity, we hold the rights of the people in these resources to be natural and inherent and justly inalienable and indefeasible; and we insist that the resources should and shall be developed, used, and conserved in ways consistent with current welfare and with the perpetuity of our people. ”

“ Such in brief, was the complicated, cumbersome and unscientific system of exchanging, or distributing wealth, which existed under the old civilization. The means of production being fixed by natural law were the same then as now. Wealth always was and must always continue to be, the product of human labor and skill applied to natural resources, facilitated by such mechanical contrivances and business methods as human skill may devise. ”

“ You make large demands upon one's credulity; but let us be generous, and suppose that six hundred companies bought land, issued honest circulars, sent out machinery, and plunged into the earth for the rightful development of resources. ”

“ The countries which unite great landed resources with a prosperous state of commerce and manufactures, and in which the commercial part of the population never essentially exceeds the agricultural part, are eminently secure from sudden reverses. ”

“ As the resources of the earth become better known, and their extent more definitely established, there is every reason to believe that, with the continuance of the present economic system, the necessity for exploiting them will become greater, and the attempts to dominate them will become more aggressive. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the rich and idle classes, increased mental energy, more solid instruction, and stronger feelings of conscience, public spirit, or philanthropy, would qualify them to originate and promote the most valuable improvements, both in the economical resources of their country and in its institutions and customs.
§ 5. Law Holds True of Mining. We must observe that what we have said of agriculture is true, with little variation, of the other occupations which it represents; of all the arts which extract materials from the globe. ”

“ May not the values destroyed, and to be recreated, in the form of trade connections, social organization, accomplished adjustments, and the like, be greater than the new values to be gained by better adaptation of industry to the physical resources or the capacities of the labor supply, of the country? ”

“ With resources for the creation of industries, the development of mining, the extension of railroads, and the enlargement of trade and commerce at home and abroad, we are abundantly blessed. Nature has lavished her riches upon this country as upon no other, as far as human knowledge has yet discovered. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have never found it necessary to strain them, because, inevitably, if you give attention to work and service, the resources will increase more rapidly than you can devise ways and means of disposing of them. ”

“ Industries and National Resources.—The occupations of the country naturally divide themselves between the mining and pastoral industries of the mountains, and the agricultural and pastoral of the plains. ”

“ Those supplied so abundantly on the earth that all individuals share them alike, without favor of fortune or forethought of mind. We may name them redundant resources. 2. Those provided so sparingly that individuals do not share them alike, but secure them by effort and by opportunity. They may be termed adequate resources. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All Economic specializations, to the uttermost of their Economic minuteness, are subject fundamentally and in their mutual relations to the natural Economic laws that govern the inter-relationship of the three Basic Facts—Artificial Objects, Man and Natural Resources. ”

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

“ The same is true of material resources: the minerals, the virgin forests, and the newly developed wheatfields of the world are being exhausted with a reckless prodigality which entails almost a certainty of hardship for future generations. ”

“ Our National wealth is great, and increases rapidly. Our material resources may, compared with those of other nations, be called inexhaustible. Our territory is large, but our means of interior communication are such as to minimize the inconveniences of distance. ”

“ He smote the rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public Credit, and it sprung upon its feet. ”

“ We speak to the entrepreneurs throughout our land who need, besides the maintenance of our free enterprise system, the practical assistance of government in the identification of markets, in the development of sources of labor and raw materials, in the availment of credit facilities, and in the concerted effort to free the full bounty of our resources as a nation. ”

“ But the Commission's hope for the future is conditional on decisive political action now to begin managing environmental resources to ensure both sustainable human progress and human survival. We are not forecasting a future; we are serving a notice — an urgent notice based on the latest and best scientific evidence – that the time has cone to take the decisions needed to secure the resources to sustain this and coming generations. We do not offer a detailed blueprint for action, but instead a pathway by which the peoples of the world may enlarge their sphere of cooperation. ”

“ Nature there demands thought and labour from man as conditions of his existence, but yields abundant rewards to wise industry. Those causes which, in our age of the world, determine the wealth of nations are those which render man most active ”

“ By permitting the division of labour and thus, on the one hand, increasing the efficiency of the human factor by the utilization of special capabilities, the acquisition of skill and the reduction of waste; and on the other hand, calling in the powers of the natural factor at their highest, by taking advantage of the diversities of soil, climate and situation, so as to obtain each particular species of wealth where nature is most favourable to its production. ”

“ And for that disease there is no other remedy than the one I have told you of—the PUBLIC OWNERSHIP and cultivation of the land, the PUBLIC OWNERSHIP of the mines, railways, canals, ships, factories and all the other means of production, and the establishment of an Industrial Civil Service—a National Army of Industry—for the purpose of producing the necessaries, comforts and refinements of life in that abundance which has been made possible by science and machinery—for the use and benefit of the whole of the people. ”

“ There are four fundamental facts connected with the subject, viz., the points of production, places of consumption, methods of operation and means of communication. Production is upon the farm, consumption in the cities and towns, methods, to be determined by experience, and the mode and means of conveyance, a government function.
Regarding the first of these divisions, certain facts are apparent. The balance of trade, eight to one is against the farmer at the point of production; he receives very much more than he sends. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To such wealth reserved and set aside for the purposes of future production, and not for immediate consumption, whether it be in the form of instruments and tools, or in the form of stores for the maintenance of labour during the process of production, we give the name of Capital. ”

“ We have surveyed the field of economical facts, and have examined how they stand related to one another as causes and effects; what circumstances determine the amount of production, of employment for labour, of capital and population; what laws regulate rent, profits, and wages; under what conditions and in what proportions commodities are interchanged between individuals and between countries. We have thus obtained a collective view of the economical phenomena of society, considered as existing simultaneously. ”

“ That as land is necessary to the exertion of labour in the production of wealth, to command the land that is necessary to labour is to command all the fruits of labour save enough to enable labour to exist. ”