172 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



Where land is abundant and labor scarce, the usual effect of 

 an increase in these forms of capital is merely to save labor 

 or to enable a given supply of labor to cultivate more land ; but 

 there is no reason why they may not be used with equal effect 

 to enable labor to cultivate the same quantity of land more 

 intensively and to get larger crops from it when land becomes 

 scarce and the necessity arises for economizing it. This may, 

 however, require some readjustment in the form of capital. 

 Instead of taking his increased capital in the form of more 

 tools, which would enable him to cover more land, the farmer 

 may possess himself of better tools, which will enable him to do 

 a better quality of work, plows which will turn deeper furrows, 

 harrows which will pulverize more thoroughly and prepare better 

 seed beds, other tools better suited to the work of exterminating 

 weeds in order that all the moisture and fertility of the soil may 

 be saved for the crops, better horses to draw these tools, superior 

 breeds of live stock to convert what they consume into more 

 valuable products than our common scrub stock are capable of 

 doing. In these and a multitude of other ways the increased 

 use of capital will enable the farmers to increase the product of 

 their land while increasing, at the same time, the product of 

 their labor. 



More intelligence. This increased use of capital is, however, 

 very closely associated with more scientific methods of cultiva- 

 tion, though not identical with them. It is not identical because, 

 without any new discoveries or without any new knowledge, the 

 farmer will necessarily work in a somewhat different way if he 

 has an abundance of capital from that in which he would work 

 if he lacked capital and could not get it. He might know per- 

 fectly well the virtues of deep plowing, cross-plowing, and sub- 

 soiling, with multifarious harrowings and cross harrowings, and 

 he might know also that it is better to drill one's grain than to 

 sow it broadcast ; yet if he lacks sufficient team force to do all 



