124 ECONOMIC ESSAYS IN HONOR OF JOHN BATES CLARK 
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that we have never before had a systematic discussion of urban 
land economics. The economists have so generally confined them- 
selves to agricultural land that when we use the term, land 
economics, people are inclined to think that we are talking about 
agricultural land. 
The economics of forestry has already received discussion, and 
it is justified by the peculiarities of forest land and the difficulties 
to its wise utilization. 
As the differentiation goes on in theory and practice, we find an 
increasing number of kinds of land. Classification is, therefore, 
essential in any discussion of land policies, and the classification 
will vary with the purposes in view. For instance, from the 
standpoint of utilization, land can be broadly classified into 
agricultural, forest, mineral and urban land, and growing atten- 
tion is being given to recreational land and also to water 
resources. 
The next natural division of land economics is a study of land 
utilization. Classification and utilization are closely related and 
interdependent. There are many uses competing for the land. 
Agriculture, forests, mines, water resources, recreation facilities, 
urban sites are all making demands upon the land. Obviously 
the main problem here is to maintain the proper balance between 
these competing uses. Then there is the question as to whether 
the different demands necessarily conflict with each other or can 
one use be made to serve two purposes as in Germany, where the 
forest areas supply both a timber crop and recreational oppor- 
tunities? It is for a national land policy, which has facts sup- 
plied by scientific research behind it, to work out a program for 
land utilization which can integrate or balance these separate 
uses to produce the maximum economic benefits for society. 
This problem of balance in relation to the land factor may be 
considered from three angles. There is first of all the matter of 
maintaining a balance between one form of land utilization and 
another. The most clear-cut illustration is that afforded by the 
use of land for the production of staple agricultural products 
and for the production of trees. We have at present relative 
overproduction of certain staple crops, which means prices so low 
that farming is too generally carried on either without any profit 
or with a very low rate as compared with returns in other indus- 
tries. At the same time we have a relative underproduction of