This periodic action of natural forces has an important influence upon economic activity, since the forces must be utilized at the time when they are active. The succession of sea sons dictates the times of sowing, cultivating, Patten, The Theory of Social Forces.
and harvest, in agriculture, of the cessation of the shipping of the colder regions because of the freezing over of rivers, of activity in the building trades and in many other industries.
Location is an element of no less importance. Coal, machinery, and muscular force may be taken with ever-lessening difficulty to the places where they are needed ; but a waterfall, a har bor, and fertile soils must be utilized where they are found. The adaptation of economic activity to environment requires the discovery of the peculiar advantages of each region and the planting of those industries in each for which it is best fitted. That this process is by no means complete is excellently illustrated by the luxu riant growth of weeds sometimes noticed in roads alongside cultivated fields in which, with great labor, man has induced only a scanty growth of grain. This comparative failure of man may be caused by a lack of proper methods of cultivation or fertilization, but it is often due to a mere blunder in deciding what crops to plant in the fields in question. The growth of weeds attests the fertility of the soil. The scantiness of the crop is equally good evidence that there is no adequate adaptation of plant and cultivation to natural conditions.
It is true that some of the limitations of local ity are removed in the course of human prog ress. The waterfall remains where nature has placed it, but its energy is transformed into electricity and carried a long distance. The soil of a large area is too bulky for re moval by man, but it is changed radically by the addition of new constituents. These consid erations modify, but they do not destroy, the effect of the principle that industry must adapt itself to the localization of natural forces. Other things being equal, there is economy in utilizing the forces of nature at the places where they are found or where they are most easily con trolled, just as there is economy in utilizing them at the time when they are in the most avail able form or when they are most active.
A third characteristic of the natural forces is, that, in order to secure satisfactory results, it is necessary that they be set in motion in a par ticular order, that the exact series of motions which will produce the desired result be discov ered, and that the series be sufficiently extended to permit the most efficient action of the requi site forces. In modern industry the series of motions involved in securing even a simple is often extended and complicated. If we desire to purchase a book, it is a simple matter to make the exchange and secure pos session of it. But the series of actions which the purchase presupposes is well-nigh infinite. The existence of the retail and wholesale book stores through which the book has come, the printing establishment, the work of the author, his preparation and all the antecedent forces that have induced him to write, the conditions that have made a demand for the particular book, — these are only a few of the most obvi ous members of the series. A complete analy sis would trace back the various steps in the growth of each of the contributing industries. What is to be noticed is, that it is this infinite complexity which secures the simple and ready result. If any steps in the series were omitted, the difficulty of securing the result which we now desire would be vastly increased.
If we can imagine a society in which the members attempt to satisfy their desires di rectly without the intervention of complex serial processes, the advantages of the present system will become clear. The man who de sired a book in such a society would be under the necessity of preparing it. But there would be the work of a lifetime in preparing the materials, if, indeed, it were not all spent in attempting to understand the difficulties of even this preliminary task. The principle is, that there is economy in far-sighted direction of the natural forces, which secures their action, in a part of the series, long in advance of the time when the given result is expected. This serial action of the forces of nature is one of those primary conditions of the economic envi ronment which, like the periodic action of cer tain forces and the localization of others, rank among the premises of economic study.