THE PROPORTIONS OF THE FACTORS OF PRODUCTION 133 



Changes in the relative abundance of the factors of produc- 

 tion, resulting in changes in their relative cost to the producer, 

 arise out of differences in the rates of increase of the supply 

 of land, labor, and equipment. If the land supply increases 

 less rapidly than labor and equipment, land will become rela- 

 tively more valuable and should be used more sparingly. As 

 a matter of fact, there was a period in the past century when 

 the area in farms was increasing more rapidly than the number 

 of farmers. This was due to the settlement of the prairies 

 aided by railway transportation. During this period the tend- 

 ency was to use more land per man and the great scarcity of 

 men in the presence of such large supplies of good land stimu- 

 lated the invention of machinery of every sort to enable man to 

 associate himself with more land. In recent years the supply 

 of land is increasing less rapidly and there is every reason for 

 believing that in the future the more rapidly increasing sup- 

 plies of men and equipment in agriculture will demand that 

 land be cultivated more and more intensively. This implies 

 that the farmers will need to be alert on the question of in- 

 tensity of culture. 



While the question of right proportions, of which intensity 

 of culture is one phase, involves all the factors equally, it has 

 been common to center the discussion about the utilization of 

 land. This has grown out of the feeling that land is usually 

 the more slowly increasing factor, and must be used more 

 intensively as the years go by. Hence, intensity of culture 

 becomes the central problem in the study of the proportions of the 

 factors, though the proportion between men and equipment 

 is also important and has been changing rapidly in the past 

 century. 



Table VII compares the increase in the acreage of improved 

 farm land with the increase in the number of persons engaged 

 in agriculture and the value of farm implements and machinery 

 from 1870 to iqio. According to this table the land increased 

 more rapidly than the workers up to the close of the 19th 

 century, but the workers increased more rapidly than the land 

 from 1900 to 1910. With the exception of one decade, ma- 



