1 82 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



get more bushels by concentrating them all on the best field 

 than by dividing them between the two fields. 1 



Increasing the population which has to be fed, clothed, housed, 

 and otherwise provided for in a given territory makes it neces- 

 sary, of course, to extract increasing crops from the soil unless 

 the people resort to manufactures and commerce and draw their 

 supplies of agricultural produce from outside areas. The effort 

 to get larger and larger quantities from the same soil tends, as 

 already stated, to exhaust its fertility. At the same time, to 

 extract this increasing quantity from the land, even where the 

 soil retains its fertility unimpaired, requires, under the law 

 of diminishing returns, more than proportionally increasing 

 expenditures of labor in cultivation, unless new and superior 

 methods of cultivation are discovered and applied. 



Experimental proofs. In addition to the general experience 

 of farmers, as indicated above, we have upon this subject the 

 specific testimony of Sir John Lawes, probably the greatest ag- 

 riculturist of modern times. Before a parliamentary commis- 

 sion in 1897 he stated that the result of all his experiments 

 tended to show that as you increase your crops by more inten- 

 sive cultivation, " each bushel after a certain amount costs you 

 more and more. . . The last bushel always costs you more than 

 all the others." 2 Consequently, when prices were low, he fur- 

 ther stated that it was necessary to reduce rather than increase 

 the intensity of cultivation. From this it would necessarily follow 

 that as population increases and greater and greater demands 

 are made upon the soil, prices must inevitably rise to cover the 

 increased cost of the additional products demanded. This is 

 specific testimony, and is backed by the experiments carried on 

 over a long period of years. It is backed also by the general 



1 Cf. the author's Distribution of Wealth (New York, 1905), chap. ii. The 

 Macmillan Company. 



2 Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), XV, 106. 



