§ 6. Increasing control of man over nature. The tech nical processes of industry have been growing more complex, and the stocks of agents used in these processes have been in creasing since the beginning of history, but never so rapidly as in the past century. This has resulted in an enormous mass and variety of indirect agents, the existence of which is an essential aspect of civilized life. Many materials are found in forms and in places where they cannot serve man's purposes. Energy is found dissipating itself in ways useless to him. As man grows in power of control over nature, he strives to apply these forces and materials in such ways and at such places as will best serve his purposes and gratify his desires. If he can arm himself with the energies of mine and torrent, he can re act with giant strength upon the material world. He refuses to accept passively its conditions and to live on its grudging gifts. He becomes its fashioner—in a sense its creator. His intelligence and his desires are more and more potent in de termining the substance, form, place, and order of the physical things about him. He transforms the world in which he lives. Accompanying and guiding the complex processes of industry are numberless acts of choice and valuation. Man's desires for direct goods and his resulting valuations motivate and direct his productive activity. The technical processes of produc tion, in turn, have their reflex influences upon values. To ar rive as fully as possible at an understanding of these inter relations is the task of the theory of value.
§ 7. Natural diversity both of direct and of indirect goods. One of the basic facts in the situation we are trying to analyze is the natural diversity of things. All the efforts of men in the most developed economy can not annul or oblit erate the differences in the quality of goods. Desirable goods are limited in quantity and vary in quality. Hence they have value, and some are more valuable than others. If they were all alike, they would all have the same relation to human de sires, and would all have the same value. Likewise durable material agents and sources of power are limited in quantity and vary in convenience of location and in their efficiency. As men seek to gratify their desires, they attach importance to these agencies for the achievement of their ends. Each is valued for its uses. Anything which is seen to have a rela tion, direct or indirect, immediate or remote, to the gratifica tion of man's desires, is brought within the circle of economic goods• § 8. The improvement of technical processes and meth ods. The invention, improvement, organization, and use of the various agencies which we have been considering, makes up the whole of man's economic activity. This is, of course, a very broad field, difficult of comprehension as a whole. It comprises a vast range of technical achievement. In the list of those who, from the beginnings of human culture, have made contributions to the slow task of improvement, we should find Adam the gardener, Abel the keeper of sheep, Tubal-Cain, "artificer in brass and iron," Jubal the "father of all such as handle the harp and organ," Archimides, Gutenberg, Watts, Fulton, Elias Howe, Samuel Morse, Bessemer, Edison, and countless others, known and unknown—peasants, artisans, nat ural scientists, and practical inventors.
The technical improvements made by such men have been among the most important of the instrumentalities of eco nomic progress. They involve in practically all cases some bet ter combination or joint use of complementary agents. The technical problem is usually a matter of the most efficient proportioning, combining, or utilizing of different indirect agents. • In a mechanism, if one part is increased without increasing the other parts, a point is reached where it does not add to the result. If in the building of a bridge the weight of the floor is increased beyond a certain point, the rest of the bridge being left unchanged, the bridge is weakened instead of strengthened. If the weight of the iron in the framework is increased beyond a certain point without strengthening the piers, the structure as a whole is weakened. If the piers are greatly enlarged, the added materials and effort may not weaken the bridge absolutely, but they dam up the stream, and thus increase the force of the waters pushing against the structure. At the same time, in flooding the adjacent lands they cause another result which was not intended or desired.
A bicycle frame, like a chain, is no stronger than its weak est part; if the strength of all parts of the wheel and frame is in proper proportion to the strain they must bear, added weight to any single part weakens the whole machine. The development of the modern type of bicycle, by many experi ments, is a good example of the adjustment of materials ac cording to the principle of technical efficiency.
A variation of the same principle is seen in chemical com binations. Exact proportions of materials must be used to get a certain result. Increasing one ingredient will not in crease the desired product. Either the added part, not enter ing at all into the compound, remains as a useless or an in jurious impurity, or it unites to form a product different from the one desired.
Thus it is in all the practical arts. The farmer must have rain to water the crops, but too much may ruin them. The cook must have fuel for heat—enough to bake but not enough to burn. The smith watches the glowing metal and puts it upon the anvil when it is just at the welding point. The laundryman puts a tinge of blue in the white clothes; with less or more the clothes are either too yellow or too blue. The painter must use the proper proportion of oil and white lead or the paint will not be durable. The plasterer must mix neither too much nor too little sand with the lime if he will make a lasting coating on the wall. The potter seeks to have the heat of the kiln exactly right to give the perfect glaze to the stone- and china-ware. There is this technical problem of the right proportion quite independent of the value of the goods. The idea of economic utilization arises when man recognizes these technical facts and their relations to value in his use of a limited supply of agents.