FACTORS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION iSl 



According to this table, as will be seen, increasing returns stop 

 and diminishing returns begin at the point where twenty days' 

 labor are expended in the cultivation of the field. 



TABLE B 



In any real case it would be impossible to tell, without put- 

 ting it to the test, at just what point diminishing returns begin, 

 though a capable farmer can tell, on the basis of his experience, 

 closely enough for practical purposes. Whenever you find a 

 competent farmer deliberately devoting a part of his labor and 

 capital to the growing of any crop on more than one grade of 

 land, you may be sure that he thinks it pays better to do so than 

 to concentrate all his energies on his best land. But this could 

 not possibly be true unless he had such an amount of these 

 factors as would, if applied exclusively to his best land, carry 

 its cultivation beyond the point of diminishing returns. If we 

 may assume, for example, that Table A represents the amount 

 of c orn produced by varying amounts of labor and capital when 

 applied to the farmer's best ten-acre field, and Table B the same 

 for his second-best ten-acre field, we shall find by comparing the 

 two tables that if he had only twenty days' labor to use, he would 



