Sec. 3. #Present-day problems:  main subjects#.  The particular economic problems in America at this time are determined by the whole complex economic and social situation.  Two main factors in this may be distinguished:  the objective and the subjective, or the material environment and the population composing the nation.  The one is what we have, the other is what we are, as a people.  These factors are closely related; for what we are as a people (our tastes, interests, capacities, achievements) depends largely on what we have, and what we have (our wealth and incomes) depends largely on what we are.  We may consider the following phases; the first two of the objective factor, and the last two of the subjective factor.

(a) The basic material resources, consisting of the materials of the earth’s surface and the natural climatic conditions which together provide the physical conditions necessary for human existence, and which furnish the stuff out of which men can create new forms of wealth.

(b) The industrial equipment, consisting of all those artificial adaptations and improvements of the original resources by which men fit nature better to do their will.  These two (a and b) become more and more difficult to distinguish in settled and civilized communities, and become blended into one mass of valuable objects, the wealth of the nation.

(c) The social system under which men live together, make use of wealth and of their own services, and exchange economic goods.

(d) The people, considered with reference to their number, race, intelligence, education, and moral, political, and economic capacity.

The particular economic problems which are presented to each generation of our people are the resultant of all these factors taken together.  A change in any one of them alters to some extent the nature of the problem.  The problems change, for example, (a) with the discovery or the exhaustion (or the increase or decrease) of any kind of basic material resources; (b) with the multiplication or the improvement of tools and machinery or the invention of better industrial equipment; (c) with changes in the ideals, education, and capacities of any portion of the people whether or not due to changes in the race composition of the population; (d) with the increase or decrease of the total number of people, and the consequent shift in the relation of population to resources.  Many examples of such changes may be found in American history, and some knowledge of them is necessary for an appreciation of the genesis and true relation of our present-day problems.

Sec. 4. #Attempts to summarize the nation’s wealth.# If we seek to compare the material resources of the nation at one period in our history with those at another period, we find that it is impossible to find a single satisfactory expression for them.  Let us examine the figures for the (so-called) “wealth of the people of the United States",[1] as it has been calculated by the census officials.