FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION 123 



increasing population is by cultivating the best land more inten- 

 sively or spreading the cultivation over the inferior land. In order 

 to avoid either necessity, both of which mean a smaller per capita 

 product or a larger expenditure of labor and capital per unit of 

 product, men have consistently and persistently sought new terri- 

 tories, just as manufacturing peoples have sought new markets. 



For a manufacturing population a lack of markets is some- 

 times called overproduction, and this condition is for them 

 what famine or underproduction is for a purely agricultural 

 people. The actual work of manufacturing not being directly 

 affected by wet or dry weather, by backward seasons, untimely 

 frosts, and other climatic conditions, a manufacturing population 

 is never threatened by underproduction in its own special work. 

 It may, however, be damaged by underproduction of its raw 

 materials, as in the case of the English factories during the 

 cotton famine of the American Civil War ; but that is a case of 

 a contracting market, for a market is a place where materials 

 are bought as well as sold. Again, a manufacturing population 

 may be affected by a crop failure or some other form of under- 

 production among its customers, as a result of which these cus- 

 tomers are unable to buy the manufactured products ; but this 

 also is a question of markets. In almost every imaginable case 

 where underproduction is found to affect a manufacturing popu- 

 lation, it will be found to affect it through its markets rather 

 than through its own power of production ; that is, it will be 

 found to be difficult either to buy raw material or to sell fin- 

 ished products. Such a thing as inability to produce enough of 

 its own peculiar products, or such a thing as underproduction 

 in its own industries, is never considered as a real danger. 



Overproduction, or a lack of markets for its finished prod- 

 ucts, is, however, a real danger for every growing manufacturing 

 population. Continued overproduction forces upon such a popu- 

 lation one of two alternatives, the conquest of new markets or 



