LABOUR AND PRICES 105 



British soils, and at the same time pay the labourers 

 21s. a week. Rents might even be extinguished, and 

 yet much of the land would fail to pay its way under the 

 plough ; the mere cost of cultivation would swallow all 

 the receipts. What the limiting price is for the various 

 soils and climates to be found in Great Britain cannot be 

 exactly estimated from the data at command, but we 

 have as a general guide the fact that after wheat had 

 risen to 30s. and over, land in England still continued 

 to go down to grass, even though wages were much 

 below the 21s. rate. With farming what it is and rents 

 at their present level (equivalent to about 5s. a quarter 

 on wheat) the farmer considers that he will make better 

 profits by putting down much of his land into grass. It 

 is true that substantial reductions in cost might be 

 effected by more skilful and wholesale working, but the 

 general principle remains untouched that on land of any 

 given quality there comes a point when arable cultiva- 

 tion cannot be maintained because of the smallness of 

 the returns for the produce and the comparatively high 

 proportion that labour bears t© the cost. An acre of 

 arable land may produce twice as much as an acre of 

 grass land, but the labour needed is at least ten times as 

 great ; at some stage in the relative prices of labour and 

 produce the grass land must become more profitable 

 than the arable. Nor will high farming to secure a 

 greater output per acre remedy matters ; we are suffi- 

 ciently near to the limit of production for the law of 

 diminishing returns to come into play. The last quarter 

 is always the most expensive to produce in labour as 

 in other expenditure, and Sir John Lawes' old maxim is 

 true, that high farming is no cure for low prices. 

 The small holder cannot solve the difficulty ; as a 



