FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 187 



values make up the greater part of this class. Here is another 

 situation which challenges the constructive statesman. The loss 

 of this kind of labor power is especially regrettable, because it is 

 usually labor power of the very highest type which goes to waste 

 in this form. The man who inherits a fortune from his father 

 must, on the average, have had a father of unusual business 

 capacity. Under the law of heredity the chances are in favor, 

 rather than otherwise, of the son's having inherited some of 

 that capacity. But there is a strong probability that this natural 

 capacity will have been spoiled by the fact that he inherited a 

 fortune and is therefore relieved of the necessity of working. 

 This latent business capacity, if developed, would add to the 

 productive resources of our country at the very point where 

 they are scarcest and therefore most needed. It is the kind of 

 power which, if set to work, would increase the supply of the 

 scarcest factor in industrial development, would strengthen in- 

 dustry where it is now weakest, and would contribute most to 

 our national prosperity. 



Dissipated energy. The greatest source of waste labor power 

 is vice and immorality. In a broad and comprehensive sense all 

 vice and immorality are ways of dissipating human energy, and 

 every form of dissipation of human energy is vice or immorality. 

 Idleness, drunkenness, rowdyism, brawling, neighborhood quar- 

 reling, dishonesty, are extreme and well-recognized sources of 

 waste energy. Less extreme but equally clear cases are general 

 list! essness, irresponsibility, and lack of interest in one's work. 

 Where labor is performed in this spirit it will not only be in- 

 efficient, but will require more supervision than would otherwise 

 be necessary. The necessity of this extreme supervision causes 

 a waste of labor power which might otherwise be employed di- 

 rectly in production, instead of indirectly in seeing that others 

 do their work properly. Every characteristic of a people which 

 reduces its productive power either by making its labor inefficient 



