128 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



practice of scientific breeding. Mendel's law (or, rather, the fact of 

 hereditary transmission of characters, on which it is based) is evi- 

 dently some part of the natural resources with which we may work 

 toward the end of agricultural production, and by which we must be 

 limited in that endeavor. But the personal ability with which this 

 or other principles of inheritance are applied to the art of cattle- 

 raising depends upon human factors and is to be classed as an attribute 

 of labor. And the product of these clever or clumsy attempts to use 

 nature's resources makes a third and separate factor of production, 

 capital-goods. Such goods have productive qualities of their own, 

 and for the duration of their existence, crystallize some fragment of 

 the potentialities of nature and man into the concrete powers and 

 limitations of a particular tool for further production. 



Finally, we face the question of conservation. This, we must 

 remember, is a matter of economic judgment, but upon a basis of 

 scientific fact. The more we know about the land as a productive 

 agent, the more sound should be our judgment as to what can best 

 be done to preserve and increase its productivity. 



In analyzing the problem we need clearly to distinguish between 

 productive use of the land, which use has in it an inevitable element of 

 impairment; waste of natural resources which is incidental to this 

 productive use but which adds nothing to the product; and waste of 

 the land through waste of its products in connection with the pro- 

 cesses of consumption. A rational conservation movement begins 

 by discovering where and how productive resources are being de- 

 stroyed, and by measuring the amount of such impairment. Second, 

 it examines where this wealth has gone and to what use it has been 

 put. Third, it enquires how much of these materials might be returned 

 to the land or need never have been taken from it. Finally, the ulti- 

 mate economic problem is how much it would cost thus to conserve 

 the given amount of natural wealth. Some enthusiastic conserva- 

 tionists have urged us to save one dollar's worth at two dollars' cost. 



Certainly there is no complete and final formula to be applied in 

 answering the conservation riddle. Our policies must be those of 

 expediency with reference to the concrete circumstances of time and 

 place. Not only do the economic circumstances of costs and prices 

 undergo a constant process of change, but the technical situation with 

 reference to which they must be considered is bound to alter in the 

 future as it has in the past. The preparation we make for coming 

 years will depend upon what kind of a future we expect it to be. If 



