We have come thus far in our study of production without stopping to inquire about the factors, or forces, that make production possible. But there is need at this point to classify these factors and to examine briefly the part each plays in producing goods.

The two primary factors of production are land and labor. Of these two, the most important, certainly the one that came first in point of time, is land. The term "land " in economics includes more than farm lands. It embraces city lots, railroad rights-of-way, forests, mines, lakes, rivers, harbors, and oceans. Land furnishes not only our food and clothing, but also our homes, our automobiles, and every other commodity we may possess. Besides, it provides a place on which to live, to work, to play, to sleep. Even before the first man had felt the need to labor, land had been producing for ages. Witness our vast coal beds. What man or group of men had anything to do with their formation? Yet we mine the coal and carry it away without even a thought of the force that land has exerted to produce it. We do, however, approach a proper appreciation of the importance of land, when it fails unexpectedly to produce, as is the case when a widespread drought prevails in grain-growing regions, when we feel a deprivation resulting from the extinction of some fur-bearing animal, or when we see the havoc caused by a mine subsidence within the limits of a populous city.

Land works blindly, and apparently without purpose. The same force that stored the coal in the earth raised useless mountain peaks. This force can, however, be directed. In fact it is directed by man. This direction we call labor. Historically, as well as in degree of importance, labor ranks second to land since without land labor could not even exist, much less produce. Whatever our own narrow experience may be, we know that the most universal, conscious activity, aside from consumption, is labor. On the farm, in the shop, store, and office, about the home, men and women, and even children, labor daily to produce commodities for the satisfaction of human wants. Strange as the statement may appear, labor in large part is a habit, which robs it fortunately of much of its irksomeness.