内容简介：
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III i THE ECONOMIC PROPERTIES OF THE FACTORS OF PRODUCTION Section I. The economic properties of land as a factor in agricultural production.?It is a familiar fact that land is essential to all forms of economic activity. Manufactures and commerce cannot be carried on without the use of land. These industries use land, however, primarily as standing-roomi The character of the soil is of little or no significance to the man who wishes to use land simply as standing-room for a cotton factory. In the case of agriculture, conditions are quite different. To the farmer, land is valuable not only because it provides space for buildings and roads, and for the performance of such work as the threshing of grain, and the feeding of cattle; it is valuable to him first of all because of those physical and chemical characteristics of the soil and the atmosphere which make the land capable of supporting plant life. Under the physical conditions which are conducive to plant growth are included: (i) the moisture and (2) the temperature of the soiland the air, and (3) the mechanical structure of the soil. The amount of rainfall and sunshine remaining the same, the moisture and the teirv- perature of the soil, and its capacity for retaining the chemical elements of fertility vary greatly from place to place because of differences in the size of the particles of the soil. By cultivation the soil may be improved to some extent, in this respect. By drainage and by irrigation the moisture of the soil can be modified, and by the use of glass and artificial heat the temperature of both the soil and the atmosphere can be regulated. But in most places and for most purposes Nature has done infinitely more for man than he can do for himself in providing the land with these desirable physic...