AGENTS FOR EFFECTING CHANGES OF PLACE AND TIME § 1. Transportation. § 2. Location as an element in value. § 3. Re lation of time to value. 1 4. Indirect agents for hastening the uses of goods. § 5. Agencies for postponing the uses of goods. § 8. Increasing control of man over nature. 1 7. Natural diversity both of direct and indirect goods. § 8. The improvement of technical processes and meth ods. § 9. The economic test of technical improvements. 1 10. The psy chology of indirect valuation. § 11. The element of time in the valuation of indirect agents.
§ 1. Transportation. The third way in which change can be effected by the indirect use of agents to bring objects nearer to the state of fitness to be direct goods, is by moving them from place to place. Indeed, it has been said that all of man's part in stuff- and in form-change can be reduced to the changing of the place of things so that they may be acted upon by each other. Yet there is a distinction between the changes in form and in stuff, just considered, and the change in place, here indicated. Change of stuff is arranging things so that there is a readjustment in their internal composition ; change of form is applying tools and forces to alter the shape of the objects (often by combining them with other objects) ; and change of place is the movement of an object, as a whole, in space to bring it to a different location. Two or more of these changes may be combined. Felling a tree is both a form and a place change, sawing it into boards is a form change, hauling it to market is a place change, carving it into furniture is a form change. When the thing thus moved, or enabled to move, is the man himself, the object that aids is a direct good. Such is the fallen tree bridging the stream, the floating log which saves the man from drowning, the boat on which he rides on 101 the water, the horse carrying its rider, the sled drawn by dogs or by reindeer. When the agents are used to aid in the move ment of other goods their uses are indirect.
The means of transportation have had a long and complex development. They compose to-day a mass of equipment com parable in extent and importance with the agencies that are used to effect changes in stuff and in form. The floating log
has been replaced in turn by raft, canoe, sail boat, and steam ship. The natural waterway has, where necessary, been deep ened and widened, or has been artificially extended by canals, some to connect rivers and others to unite the waters of the oceans. The early trails through the woods have given place to wagon roads and to railways. The heavy oxcarts have been succeeded by wagons, railway cars, locomotives, automobiles, and flying-machines.
§ 2. Location as an element in value. From the first, of course, all these agencies must have been more or less vaguely recognized as useful and their results as valuable. The rela tion between location and value, however, tho obvious and simple in many concrete cases, has as a matter of general theory proved difficult of comprehension to a great many minds. Even careful thinkers long found it easy to attribute great importance to operations such as those of agriculture which appear to bring something physical into existence, yet to misconceive the nature of the changes made in value through manufacturing and transportation. This was the error of the eighteenth century economists of France—known as the Physi ocrats—and it has been a recurrent error ever since. It seems to be naturally easy for men to conceive of value as inherent in things rather than as resulting from a relation between things and men. Yet the truth is so obvious that physical proximity is a very significant element in value. The treasure chest which is lost forever in the depths of the ocean has be come and will remain utterly worthless to man. Brought to shore, where the treasure could be used, it might be worth a fabulous amount. So anything, to be of the greatest value, must at a certain moment be close at hand or at the right place. Clearly then those various agencies which move things from one place to another the better to meet the consumer's desires, must be regarded as contributing factors in the value of the direct use obtained.