1914] Interest Theories, Old and New 91

patience aside” ;** “For even those [productive borrowers] who are
not by nature impatient” etc.® Professor Brown shows well‘® the
inaptness of the word “impatience,” but his argument is futile as
a refutation of a true psychological theory, for he is quite
overlooking the substance, while he rchases the shadow, of
time-preference.,
This motive to borrow exists as well when the agent to be bought
with borrowed money is land, as when it is another agent. But
just here® Professor Brown withdraws to the citadel, the cost-ofproduction
 of capital, as that which tends “to fix the rate of
interest and of discount.” He reaffirms the
importance of the. distinetion which Professor Seager has recently emphasized,
 between land and made capital, between original natural
resources and “the produced means to further production.” Land is
already present. For the most part, there is no balancing of choice as
:o whether or not we shall produce it.
What is the force of “already present”? Does “for the most
part there is no balancing of choice” etc., mean that the way we
use land has not affected its quantity in the past, and does not
affect it for the future, either as acres or as productive power? In
‘his day of the conservation and reclamation movements, are we
to forget the part of repairs and depreciation, and assume the immutability
 of acres, arable and other kinds? Is there not involved
in any standard of husbandry where soil-fertility is maintained, an
adjustment of the cost-of-production and of the capitalization of
sach arable acre to its price based on its expected return quite as
*his is done in the case of factories ?®®
It is not for us here to discuss further the older conception of
zapital here involved. We had supposed that it had become unthinkable
 in the atmosphere of Columbia and of Yale, under the
inffuenees of J. B. Clark and of Irving Fisher.

VIII. Summary.

Surely we are making some progress in formulating more clearly
‘he issues involved in the interest problem. "Che opinions we have
reviewed face in at least three different directions, not squarely
“ Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug., 1913, p. 639.
®Idem, p. 640.
% Tdem, p. 637.
" Tdem, p. 644.
%® Professor V. G. Simkhovitch’s illuminating article on “Hay and History,”
in the Political Seience Quarterliy, Sept., 1918, gives new evidence of the effect