Читать книгу Rural Wealth and Welfare: Economic Principles Illustrated and Applied in Farm Life - Geo. T. Fairchild - Страница 4

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Production defined.—A very little thought shows that men produce nothing in the sense of creating. All production is simply overcoming obstacles to satisfaction of wants as we find these obstacles in space, time and form or substance of natural objects. In doing this we are confined to mere ability to move things. The very highest effort of man's energy today but proves the saying of Lord Bacon, “All that man can do is to move natural objects to and from each other: nature working within accomplishes the rest.” This is fully illustrated in farm operations. The bringing together of soil, seed, sunshine and shower, according to their natures, secures the product of nature—a crop. Moving food and water to the steers, or the steers to food and water, under proper conditions of warmth, air and exercise, produces beef. To know how and when and where to move things so that nature may meet our wishes by what always happens under the [pg 022] same circumstances, would be to have all the arts of life; in short, production is the art of moving things. But we distinguish different kinds of production according to the direct results expected from our motion, as reducing space and time, modifying the form, or changing the substantial qualities of things handled.

Transportation in production.—The change of place necessary to bring together wants and those things which satisfy them is a method of producing wealth most apparent everywhere. The bringing of wild fruits from the forest or the swamp to the home gives them worth. The mere transportation, change of place, gives them an importance they did not have on the trees or bushes. In this transportation we put the energy necessary to take grain from the fields all the way to the bake-ovens, and finally to our mouths, or to carry the milk from the stable or yard in pail, can, wagon, train, delivery cart and bottle, to the lips of the child whose life it maintains. Every kind of material or force expended in this process of overcoming space is used in the idea that the object is worth the expenditure in the place finally reached. If the motion stops anywhere along the way, the wealth is not obtained, or at least is held only in expectation until the motion can be completed. While each of fifty individuals may give a hand, and pass his claim to the next for a consideration, the wealth is all the way increasing in anticipation, as the object comes nearer its use.

In this progress time as well as space is an important obstacle to be overcome, and we employ all means of increasing speed, or preserving against what we call [pg 023] “the ravages of time,” i.e., the operation of injurious forces acting in time upon most material substances. The methods employed for storing, curing and forcing to maturity the various forms of food needed in a community are aimed at meeting this obstacle, and add to its final worth; indeed these may be the means of giving value to all the other efforts in transportation, as in moving beef from Kansas City to New York, or fresh fruit from San Francisco to Boston.

In the same process of putting things where they are needed, all merchants are engaged. Without the store, the order upon the shelves, the ready attendant and his despatch in meeting your demand, the pounds of sugar or salt essential to your comfort could not be had for love or money. These efforts are an essential part in the motion between wants and objects to satisfy them. Much of this kind of motion we include under the name commerce, though that word more directly implies the exchanges involved. The machinery of commerce is chiefly the means of bringing things wanted to the people who want them.

Much, however, of the exertion required in all industries, especially in farming, is simply “to fetch and carry.” It will emphasize this fact to study, while you eat a piece of cherry pie, the processes involved in bringing it from the treetop, grainfield, dairy and cane-field, through mill and store and pantry and oven, to your plate. Transportation cuts a tremendous figure in production of wealth. In the first stages of social life it is almost the whole. The hunter talks of “bringing in” his game. Australians, Hottentots and Digger [pg 024] Indians lived by carrying themselves from one supply of food to another.

Transformation in production.—Much of the material gathered by us needs some change of form to suit our wants. An ax-helve has in it the original wood of the young hickory brought from the forest, but its form is fashioned by effort with ax, drawshave, scraper and sandpaper, until it satisfies the judgment of an expert chopper. This transformation is employed in any industries where wood, ivory, the metals and other minerals are shaped by tools, or by molding, or pressing or bending, to our wishes. Most fabrics are materials put into form. The word manufacture covers most of such work where materials are manipulated by shaping; but it also includes many operations with a different aim, to change the substance itself.

Transmutation in production.—Men have found that two metals, tin and copper, melted together produce brass, different in qualities from either. Farmers have for many centuries contrived, by keeping nature's forces under control in the wheat field, to combine certain elements of the soil, including its moisture, into grain. The single seed has multiplied a hundredfold through being placed in favorable conditions, with the raw materials at hand in the fertile soil.

The process of maintaining animals with suitable food for the production of milk or flesh is similar. The combination of flour, water, salt and yeast, by heat, first mild and then intense, into a loaf of bread is a good illustration of a change of qualities by rearrangement of the elements of a substance. It is sometimes [pg 025] called transmutation, and comes the nearest possible to creation of material things. The chemist's laboratory exists for making such new combinations, and many of the arts produce materials, like steel, which would not exist without such combination. But many have seen in the art of agriculture a most prominent illustration of transmuting coarser elements into products adapted to human wants for food, shelter and adornment. All such work, however, is done by bringing objects and forces into such contact that chemical or vital changes will take place while we wait.

Production extended.—In all these three directions, or in any combination of them, transporting, transforming and transmuting materials, men seek the production of a supply for meeting anticipated wants, and so contribute directly or indirectly to welfare. No one way of producing what men need, where they need it, and when they need it, has any superior claim to the name production. All are making the material yield up welfare to the one who needs it, and produce wealth just so far as their services are necessary in bringing the welfare. If ever any step in the process becomes useless, it ceases to be productive of wealth and becomes waste. The inventive powers of mankind are always at work to shorten the processes and hasten the advantages of production. Men study the minutest workings of nature to find the conditions under which she does her part of the work. The application of such minute knowledge is a chief part of every art. This is also the object of science; for, as Guizot says, “It only began to have a well defined existence when it confined itself to [pg 026] seeking the ‘how’ rather than the ‘why’ of nature's workings.” This purpose sustains in the United States more than fifty agricultural experiment stations, united in a great organization, to find how the natural forces used by farmers do their work.

This prophecy of a noted economist is warranted: “Probably the greatest economic revolution which the youth of today may in his old age behold, will be found in this all-important branch of our industries.” When we know how nature works, we can adjust our little motions in time and place to promote that work; we shall have the art of moving things to suit our needs. Nothing can be truer than Tennyson's line, “We rule by obeying nature's powers.”

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