The products of the extractive industries are the _ primary raw materials of the manufacturing indus tries.
4. Climate and is a fact that men are very much influenced by the climate and environment in which they live. Indeed, most writers upon racial development look upon the cli mate of a country' as one of the most important-factors in the development of a people's character. The rigorous climate of New England and parts of Can ada, subjecting the people to great extremes of atmosphere, must, it is believed, tend to produce a hardy, vigorous, self-reliant people. A changeable_ climate with an uncertain rainfall and great variations in temperature is said by some scientists to account in part for the much discussed nervousness of A_mericans. The stolidity of the English is attributed to the equable climate. Buckle in his famous "History of Civilization," which was never completed, found in the differences of climate and physical environment the main causes of the development of races charac terized by different qualities.
The subject is a most interesting one, but in a treatise on economies we cannot give it much consid eration. It is sufficient to know that climate and environment are important factors in the production of wealth. Theoretically they are a part of the lama and cannot be bought or sold by themselves. Only in a slight degree has man been able to modify or im prove a climate, but his physical environment is some what under his control. Thus the introduction of artificial ice and the electric light have done much to make the lot of Europeans in the tropics more com fortable. The cultivation of forests in some regions tends to prevent the damaging floods of spring and the exhausting droughts of summer, and irrigation can be made to lessen the evils of an arid climate. That is why all governments have expended large sums for the production and conservation of forests and upon. systems of irrigation.
It is coMparatively recently that the conservation of natural resources has been recognized as a national dutST in the United States. Appropriations for the
improvement of rivers and harbors, not always judiciously expended, are of long standing; disburse ments for these purposes in the five years ending June 30, 1915, amounted to nearly two hundred million dollars. The Fish Commission, later the Bureau of Fisheries, was established in 1871. Its annual dis bursements are over one million dollars. The Bureau of Forestry spends over five million dollars annually, and devotes something more than one million dollars each year to the acquisition of lands for the protection of watersheds of navigable streams. The irrigation projects of the United States Government will in volve a total outlay of about $175,000,000 and will bring three million acres under. cultivation. About half of this program has already been carried out.
5. word rent is commonly applied to cover the payment made to the owner of land or of any economic good, except money, by some other man who enjoys the use of it. In economics the rent of land is always spoken of as economic rent or pure rent, for it is generally held that the rent of land is subject to a law unlike that which governs the rent of buildings and other economic goods. This difference will be discussed later.
It should be noted that all improvements -of land which increase its productivity become really a part of the land; for example, the fences on a farm, the ditches which drain its meadows, fertilizers placed in the soil, all these things become a part of the land in which they are embodied.
In the last analysis rent is the enjoyment that man get—s out of any utility or human service, and by some economists the term is used in this broad sense. The wages of a farmer's hired man are said to be really the rent paid for his services and represent in the last analysis the satisfaction which the farmer gets out of a man's work. If a man works for himself he gets the rent or usufruct of his own labor.
In this book we shall not use rent in this broad sense but shall employ it in its common usage.