596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



there is any indisputable fact in the world it is that important changes 

 are being made in the methods of cultivation and exploitation, and as 

 for equal " doses " of capital and labor, who is so simple as to think of 

 adding them ? The question is not that of adding another cartload of 

 the old fertilizer to a wheat field, but of adding some new fertilizer, 

 exactly fitted to the wants of the crop, by which it may be doubled in 

 quantity. It is not a question of adding a man with a sickle, but of 

 adding a man with a modern harvester; not of sowing the old seed to 

 yield tenfold, but the new seed to yield an hundredfold. Capital is 

 multiplying so rapidly that it worries some people, at least, to know 

 what to " dose," and invention multiplies the units of labor so fast 

 that they outstrip even our imagination. Now, to be sure, individual 

 farmers must have practical methods of directing the expenditure of 

 what capital and labor they have, and the law applies to them since 

 an individual is more or less in an eddy, just as I am in the matter of 

 capital. I have little more than I had before the last multiplication of 

 the capital of the world, but I am not so personal as to deny the increase. 

 I claim to be part of the age of airships, though I have never seen one, 

 and am no nearer an automobile than a state of covetousness. I try not 

 to be like the woman in a small town who came to me after a lecture 

 in which I had said that, since three fourths of the women in that vil- 

 lage bought their bread from bakeries where it was made by men, they 

 could retain their power over bread making only by voting, she confi- 

 dentially told me that she made her own bread, and hence did not see 

 any need for women's voting. It seems to me that an economic law 

 ought to be comprehensive enough to summarize the individual cases. 

 Professor Carver shows conclusively that in an individual case the 

 law of diminishing returns may work exactly. He even shows that 

 large-scale production does not overthrow the principle; but he does 

 not consider the pertinent fact of modern industry, that invention, or- 

 ganization and efficiency make constantly changing conditions, and that 

 " equal doses " are out of date. He admits that the law is more evi- 

 dent when applied to stationary civilization, saying, "If civilization 

 should remain stationary while population increases in density there 

 would be a smaller per capita production because of the law of dimin- 

 ishing returns. The terrible reality of this law is witnessed by the 

 overcrowding of those populations where, as in the unchanging east, 

 civilization has become stationary." I reply, " to be sure," but modern 

 economics is neither history nor anthropology, and what should be 

 taught in our colleges and to business men is a principle that ap- 

 plies to a progressive civilization. Again Carver says, " but with 

 respect to the livelihood of a complex population considering all its in- 

 dustries in a mass, the operation of the law is not so clearly perceived." 



