Foundations, Professors and “Economic Education”

Abstract

RECENTLY I RECEIVED from American Economic Foundation, 295 Madison Avenue, New York 17, an illustrated folder by Fred G. Clark and Richard Stanton Rimanoczy entitled What Are Tools? The authors state that piece of mechanical equipment is a tool of production. Then they go on to include among such tools not only roof over equipment, walls around it and floor under it, but also the land under floor. And then they add: A coal mine, an oil well, a forest, an ore deposit, or any other natural resource becomes a tool of production to men who extract from nature raw materials which go into manufacturing. By thus putting all land and, in general, all natural resources into category of tools, authors turn reader away from considering a very fundamental question. This fundamental question is whether an income derived from man-made equipment that cannot come into existence at all unless there is both labor and saving, is on no stronger an ethical and social utility basis than is an income one can receive just because others must pay him for his permission to work on and to live on earth, in those locations made productive and desirable because of geological forces and community development, and for his permission to withdraw fuels and minerals from earth's subsoil deposits. Lest this statement seem to some readers not entirely clear, we may illustrate by reference to case of New York City.1 New York is situated on a great natural harbor. If there were none to use harbor except a few pioneer farmers on Manhattan Island trading their surplus produce for textiles and other goods of Europe, landing space for a very few boats or perhaps for a single one would be all that would be needed. But as rich interior of North American continent was settled, with its mines of iron ore, copper and coal, its prairie and river-bottom wheat and corn land, and its other resources, more and more goods were produced to be poured through port of New York into foreign countries. And, of course, more and more foreign goods were wanted in exchange, which could most advantigeously pass through