Directness, like valuation, has relation to some one person in each case. There are many things, commodities of trade, which in their physical substance and form are ready to be used directly, yet which in the course of trade are still in direct goods to their possessors. As yet they are merely the means of earning a business profit (have an indirect use), but they will later render direct uses to the final consumer.' Retail and wholesale stores, cold storage and other ware houses, are filled with goods of this kind.
I This peculiar case is personal, "contractual" indirectness, resulting from a legal contract between men.
Such facts as these make it clear that concrete goods can not be rigorously classified as either direct or indirect. Any particular good may under different circumstances be used either directly or indirectly. Therefore, the classification of directness and indirectness applies properly to uses rather than to goods, and it is a matter of much importance in our study of economics to keep this thought clearly in mind.
§ 6. Various changes affecting value. Desire is directed upon concrete goods, but in the logical view it is all the uses together which, as experience corrects false impulses and • hopes, constitute the cause of all the desires men have for the objects and forces of the outer world. Nothing which is not in some casual relation, near or remote, to desire, has value. The vine which Tantalus is unable to reach magnifies his misery. A captive, chained to a rock, gets uses only from the things within his reach. Men living in savagery and ignorance starve amid the possibilities of plenty. Chained by their in capacity and by their improvidence to a little spot of earth, they do not see clearly, either in time or in space, the eco nomic relations about them. Men begin by valuing goods for their direct uses, but the valuation comes to be extended over all the goods having indirect uses, which by instinct, experi ence, habit, association of ideas, etc., have come to have a connection with desire.
The nature of the uses rendered by goods may be considered here in connection with the thought of the four aspects of choice as already It was seen there that choice presents itself in one of four aspects, a preference for a kind of goods (stuff), for goods of a particular form, or at a certain place, or at a certain time.
Now the various uses which are accomplished through the indirect instrumentality of goods may be divided into four general classes : (1) stuff changes, (2) form changes, (3) place changes, and (4) time changes. The blast furnace helps to
convert the ore into pig iron. The sawmill cuts the log into 2 See note on Aspects of things chosen, at end of ch. 2.
boards. The steamship carries grain across the ocean. The greenhouse hastens the growth of flowers and vegetables so that they may be brought earlier to market.
It is almost needless to say that such changes have results in the realm of value. For the increase in value which is ex pected to result from these changes, of course, gives the motive for bringing the changes about. If grain were not, to some one, more valuable in Liverpool than in New York there would be nothing to gain in shipping it three thousand miles across the ocean. If the log were as useful as the boards, the labor and materials put into the sawmill could be turned in other directions.
It must be observed, however, that all four considerations —stuff, form, place, and time—are factors that enter into value whenever value exists. If a particular thing has value, that value is due partly to its composition, partly to its form, partly to its being where it is, and partly to its being avail able at the particular time. A change in any one of these factors might bring about a change in the value.
§ 7. Agencies for altering stuff or material. Man can not create a single atom of matter. He must work with the materials which nature puts at his In what sense, then, may we say that man can change the stuff or material of which things are composed? There are many chemical and biological processes instituted by man which bring about changes in the chemical content and material composition. One of the most important ways in which man makes altera tions of this kind is in tilling the soil. The farmer plants the seed in carefully prepared ground in such a way that the proper conditions of air, light, and water permit plant growth, and cause the regrouping of the chemical elements of the soil into new forms of organic matter. The first rude cultivation of the soil was a step beyond the achievements of any animal. It meant the purposeful increase of the kinds of stuff man desired, by a method very different from the Refer to ch. 3, see. 1, on Inherent physical nature of things.