CONSUMPTION AND DURATION § 1. Consumptive and non-consumptive uses of goods. f 2. Direct uses, consumptive and durative. 3. Indirect uses, consumptive and dura tive. 14. The single consumptive use. 0 5. No economic goods abso lutely durable. f 6. Inevitable depreciation. § 7. Using up of agri cultural land. f 8. Artificial durability of agricultural land. 19.
Varying rates of depreciation of machinery. 10. Repair of tools and machinery. f 11. Economy of repairs. 12. Production as betterment and repair of nature.
§ 1. Consumptive and non-consumptive uses of goods. We have in the last two chapters considered two essential as pects that every use of a good exhibits. We have seen that every use is more or less direct or indirect (roundabout), ac cording as the good acts directly upon the person using it or indirectly transmits its effect through some other good; this is the technical relation of uses (and of goods) to desires. We have seen next, that a use may be either present or future in varying degrees (and in either case may be valued) ; this is the time-relation of uses to desires. We now come to the con sideration of yet another aspect of use, namely, the effect that the use has upon the duration of the object yielding the use (called the use-bearer). This may be termed the duration relation of goods to desires. The apple is eaten and gone; the picture continues for years to impart beauty to the room. The lemonade quenches thirst once, the glass in which it is served may be used many times. The use that destroys the good (or its possibilities of further use) is a consumptive use. Coal is consumed and becomes ashes, smoke, and gas, as it is burnt to create heat for comfort, for cooking, and for steam power. The white gloves are consumed when they become 111 soiled (unless they can be cleaned). There is, of course, no physical annihilation of matter in any of these eases, but merely a change in the qualities that relate the good to de sires. The essential test of economic consumption lies in the effect that use has in unfitting the use-bearer for the rendering of subsequent uses.
In contrast with the thought of consumption of a use-bearer is the thought of its dura tion. In contrast with the consumptive use, which uses up the use-bearer, is the durative use which leaves the use-bearer more or less capable of render ing subsequent uses. These ideas are abundantly illus trated in what follows.
§ 2. Direct uses, con sumptive and durative. Direct goods that are momentary gratifiers, yielding only a single use, and being destroyed in the using, are represented by multitudes of consumable foods and drinks in cellars and in pantries, on tables, in restaurants, hotels, and saloons; by matches, candles, oil, gas for lighting, fuel for heating houses ; by cigars, fireworks, and many other things which appeal directly to the senses. The use of these things when it occurs unites the three qualities; it is direct, it is present, it is con sumptive.
A dwelling is an example of a good for direct use which is durable and gives off throughout a period of time a series of • If degrees of directness are represented as ranging from a to d (as in Figure 18) then degrees of durativeness may be represented as ranging from 1 to 4 (4 being the consumptive use). These qualities thus are in two dimensions; for example, the use of a marble statue might be called that of a tent that of a match for lighting a blast furnace etc. .
direct uses. The durability of houses is not absolute or uni form, but is more or less, varying from the Indian tepee to the marble or granite palace that will stand for centuries. Houses are subject to wear and tear, and thus undergo a slow consumption, but this, with care, is so slight that it often is less than the deterioration from disuse. The supply of hous ing, while insufficient for some classes of our population, is to-day enormous—winter houses and summer houses, city and suburban, private houses and hotels, churches and theaters. All are more or less durable, and are direct goods, excepting as the owners use them in business as a source of rent or of profit. Every durable agent, of course, contains future ,sei well as present uses. That is the essence of the idea of dura tiveness. Direet, present, and durable (in a degree) are also furniture, pianos, organs, and musical instruments of every kind, carriages and horses, bicycles, automobiles, boats, and many other material agents used for enjoyment. Especially good examples of this class of goods are those whose appeal is to the eye—pictures, statuary, and other contents of private and of public museums. Very similar in this regard are all grounds with improvements used for residence purposes, all yards, trees, lawns, playgrounds, public parks and reserves for sightseers such as the Yosemite Valley, Yellowstone Park, and Niagara Falls, and mountains covered with forests held for private or public pleasure in hunting, fishing, and camping. Nearly all the material equipment used in education is marked by this grouping of qualities, as well the school grounds as the school books, libraries, furniture, and apparatus for illustra tion and instruction. Among the most lasting of the goods which man has shaped by his action are *great, engineering works—railroad tunnels, bridges, aqueducts, roadways, canals between rivers, lakes, and oceans (Panama, Suez, etc.). These, so far as they are used by passengers, are giving direct uses. Ornaments and other goods made of the precious metals are among the most durable of the direct goods man possesses. Other kinds of ornament, such as feathers, laces, and ordinary clothing, while less durable than most of the foregoing exam ples, share the quality of durability in a degree and with care may be made to yield very lengthened series of uses.