1 78 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



only $400, the farmer has only $900 for his two hundred days' 

 labor. But if one hundred days' labor on the best field will pro- 

 duce a crop worth $500, two hundred days' labor on the same 

 field ought to produce twice as big a crop, worth $1000. 

 Therefore the farmer loses $100 by putting half his labor on 

 his inferior land. 



If it were true that the second hundred days' labor on the best 

 field would produce as much as the first hundred, or, to put it 

 more accurately, if two hundred days' labor on that field would 

 produce twice as much as one hundred, and three hundred days' 

 labor three times as much, and so on indefinitely, the argument 

 would be unanswerable and the farmer would be very foolish 

 not -to follow your advice. Moreover, the community at large 

 would be acting very unwisely in not concentrating all its ener- 

 gies upon a relatively small area of its best land. But the farmer 

 knows perfectly well, and so does the community at large, that 

 such is not the case, that the produce of a given piece of land 

 cannot be doubled, trebled, quadrupled, and so on indefinitely, 

 by merely doubling, trebling, and quadrupling the amount of 

 labor and capital expended in its cultivation. In the case already 

 assumed.it is more probable that although one hundred days' 

 labor would produce a crop worth $500, two hundred days on 

 the same field would produce a crop worth only $800. In that 

 case it would pay better by $ i oo, under the conditions assumed, 

 to put the second hundred days' labor on some other part of the 

 farm. It is because the farmer, who is in the best position to 

 judge, knows that such conditions are real that he does not 

 concentrate all his energies on the small fraction of his farm 

 which includes only his best land. 



Why more land is better than less land. To say that the 

 farmer knows better than to concentrate all his energies on his best 

 land is the same as saying that he knows and'acts upon one of the 

 fundamental laws of economics, namely, the law of diminishing 



