AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



with a given degree of productivity, the distance 

 between the lines A B and A I' B will depend 

 upon the degree of qualitative efficiency possessed 

 by the farmer who operates the laborers and the 

 capital-goods, and also upon the character of the 

 laborers and capital-goods which he employs. 

 For this reason it will be necessary to keep in 

 mind a given farmer employing a given grade of 

 laborers and capital-goods, as well as a given 

 piece of land. With these conditions in mind we 

 may speak of the area AC C (Fig. i) as repre- 

 senting the product which would result if but one 

 unit were employed per acre, and of the area C C' 

 D r D as representing the increase in the product 

 due to the addition of the second unit and so on for 

 the succeeding units. As illustrated in Fig. i, the 



w 



F R H 



X YL 



Fig. i. 



product of each succeeding unit is greater than 

 the one preceding it until six units have been ex- 

 pended, after which each succeeding unit may be 

 said to yield a smaller product than the one im- 

 mediately preceding it. 



Indeed it may be true that a law of stationary 

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