Search -
Economics for Irishmen (Large Print Edition)
Economics for Irishmen - Large Print Edition Author:Pat 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. THE AGENTS OF PRODUCTION. THE usual plan of economic writers is to give extensive chapters to each of the Agents of Production in succession, wi... more »thout any reference to the next, or the next again, on which the first depends for significance. On this plan, the student is required to equate the unknown as he proceeds, without data, which often makes the task very discouraging. The full meaning of each agent can be seen only in relation to the others; therefore it will be at once more simple and more scientific to deal first, broadly, with all the agents together, showing their general relations to one another, and their co-relations to the production of wealth, and then proceed to more special study of each separately. The Agents of Production are " Land, Labour and Capital," and the production of wealth depends first on their efficiency in themselves, and, secondly, on their association in the process. In a normal, healthy condition of things. with men free and capable to obey their economic motives. the growth of wealth naturally follows the presence of its agents of production, because the inducements and facilities to associate and organize the agents are not hindered ; but when we see the agents ample in themselves, yet with production declining, and labour emigrating, we know beyond question that there is something abnormal and unhealthy. This is the case in Ireland, and it remains for us to lay bare the unhealthy andabnormal forces which thus derange our industrial system, and drive the Irish out of Ireland. The immediate cause of the ruin is the derangement of the agents and of the productive process; but in dealing with a people like ours, it is necessary to show how the derangement comes about, and to demonstrate the connection between it and the nationa...« less