Governments are legislative, executive and judicial agencies of social wholes. It is their function to contribute service to the production of Artificial Objects by preserving public order, defining and protecting private rights, distinguishing and conserving common rights, and managing or providing for the management of common affairs. To the degree that governments faithfully exercise their legitimate public functions and refrain from interfering with legitimate private functions, they contribute to the Productive Process. This is demonstrated by observable Economic results. Wherever Government approximates a realization of its functions, Economic conditions are manifestly better than where it neglects or abuses them. Evidently, then, Government is a form of human service which, like all other human service forms, belongs as an Economic factor in the Labor category. And as with Governments, so is it with all other organizations in so far as their organic activities tend to promote good order, fair dealing, righteous social adjustments, peace, and general Economic prosperity. The essential considerations with reference to Labor may be compactly summarized in these terms: (1) Labor can create nothing; it can only _produce_, by altering the forms and locations of natural substances. (2) Nothing but Labor can so produce. (3) Labor is therefore the sole directing factor in the production of Artificial Objects from and upon Natural Resources. II. NATURAL RESOURCE FACTORS In the foregoing discussion of the relation of Labor in its broad Economic meaning to the Productive Process, it has been necessary, as a precaution in the interest of clear thinking, to give warning that the technical term Labor is often blurred in its significance by colloquial or business interpretations. A like warning is necessary with reference to the technical term for Natural Resources. This term, adopted long ago and quite appropriate and distinctive, is Land. If it be said that Labor applied to Land produces Artificial Objects, the Economic meaning is the same precisely as if it were said that Artificial Objects are produced by Man from and upon Natural Resources. But all rational Economic meaning departs from the statement if indefinite colloquialisms or loose business terms be substituted for the precise technical terms. Yet the technical term Land, like the technical term Labor, suffers in significance from a variety of colloquial and indefinite business interpretations. Indiscriminately it may mean open prairie land, or improved farms, or vacant building-lots, or buildings and the lots on which they stand, or all of them together. The absurdity of such undiscriminating interpretations is obvious to any one who reflects upon the significance of the three Basic Facts of Economics--Man, Natural Resources and Artificial Objects.