The Value of Land

In William Faulkner's The Hamlet, the boy Labove takes a job grading and building a football field in order to pay for his schooling at the University:

“He didn’t know then what a football field was and he did not care. To him it was merely an opportunity to earn so much additional money each day and he did not even stop his shovel when he would speculate now and then with cold sardonicism on the sort of game the preparation of ground for which demanded a good deal more care and expense both than the preparing of that same ground to raise a paying crop on; indeed to have warranted that much time and money for a crop, a man would have had to raise gold at least.”