, A BUGBEAR OF REFORMERS 501 



tensive culture, such as wheat, beef, etc. This would mean a change in 

 the standard of living. Possibly it might be a good thing to make this 

 change in our habits ; but why should it be necessary ? Simply because 

 of the law of diminishing returns. That is to say, in order that in- 

 creasing populations may have plentiful supplies of bread and beef from 

 the same areas, these crops would have to be cultivated more and more 

 intensively. These crops do not respond readily to this method, and 

 the cost per unit rises very rapidly, which, again, is due to the law of 

 diminishing returns. Other crops respond somewhat better, but they 

 also come under the same law, and eventually the point would be 

 reached when more land would be better than less land, even for the 

 growing of these crops. Wherever that is true, the point of diminish- 

 ing returns has been reached. Wherever agricultural populations tend 

 to spread as they are doing out west to-day, rather than to concentrate, 

 it is a sign either of general insanity on their part, or of diminishing 

 returns from land. I am one of those who believe that it is a sign of 

 diminishing returns, that is, that these increasing populations find it 

 more advantageous to spread over more land than to concentrate on the 

 land already in their possession and try to get their living from those 

 limited areas. That, again, means diminishing returns. Increasing the 

 number of men working on a given area of agricultural land will not 

 proportionally increase the products. That means a smaller product 

 per man, though it may mean a larger product per acre. 



The law of diminishing returns as ordinarily stated is, really, 

 nothing more than a technically specialized statement of the fact that 

 land is a limiting factor in production. A limiting factor is merely a 

 factor upon whose quantity depends, in some degree, the quantity of 

 the product. Wherever it is true that more land is better than less 

 land, or where one can say, "more land more product, less land less 

 product," there land is a limiting factor and the law of diminishing 

 returns is in operation. From a narrow and piecemeal view, it some- 

 times appears that a manufacturing and commercial policy frees a na- 

 tion from this limitation, because, so long as an abundance of raw ma- 

 terials can be brought in from the outside, and all the finished products 

 of the manufacturing industries can be marketed somewhere else, there 

 seems to be no assignable limit to the amount which a nation can manu- 

 facture, if it only have labor and capital enough. That is to say, there 

 always seems to be room enough for manufacturing and business sites. 

 Land, from the national point of view, does not seem to be a limiting 

 factor in these industries, though occasionally, in the narrower limits 

 of a single city, land becomes scarce even for these purposes. But, as 

 suggested above, this is a piecemeal view of the problem, for economic 

 laws and principles are no more confined within national boundaries 

 than they are within city walls. If all the industries, both rural and 



