122 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



economy, we shall find that, within the narrow area of a city, 

 the question of land sometimes seems to limit the amount 

 which the city can produce, even in the way of manufacturing. 

 If the population will spread to new areas in the suburbs, there 

 need be no scarcity of land. But men within the city area, 

 moved by city pride, sometimes feel a profound interest in the 

 building up of industry and wealth within the city limits, and 

 are not satisfied with the mere fact of the growth of wealth 

 in the country as a whole. In such cases they find, of course, 

 that the scarcity of land within those limits is a serious hin- 

 drance to further development. But from a national standpoint 

 this is not a problem worth considering. 



As agriculture advances from the. self-sufficing to the com- 

 mercial stage, that is, from the stage where the farm produces 

 most of the things consumed by the farmer and his family to a 

 stage where most of the products of the farm are sold and 

 most of the things to be consumed are bought with the pro- 

 ceeds, the question of markets for agricultural produce is a 

 matter of growing importance ; but it never rises to the im- 

 portance that it always has for manufacturing populations, nor 

 does it ever compare in this respect with the question of land 

 for a growing agricultural population. 



Dependence of agriculture upon land. 1 No matter how exten- 

 sive the markets for agricultural produce may be, and no matter 

 how numerous agricultural workers may be, there is a limit to 

 the quantity which can be produced within a given area. When 

 the farms have become contiguous, and all the best land in the 

 given territory has been put to some agricultural use, the only 

 possibility of increasing the total product necessary to sustain the 



1 By courtesy of the Carnegie Institution the author is permitted to use, in 

 the following pages, some of the material which was written for the Agricul- 

 tural History of the United States, which is being prepared under the direction 

 of that institution. 



