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 RENTS AND PROFITS 191 



that with the increase of population rents would tend to rise. 

 Exceptions to this general truth arise when new and fertile 

 regions are made easily accessible by the extension of railways, 

 by Indian treaties, or other means of like character. When the 

 agricultural population is increasing and the increased supply 

 of land must be taken from the less efficient grades, the trend of 

 rent is upwards. When new and more efficient grades of land 

 are made available more rapidly than the population increases, 

 the trend is downward. Thus rents may rise or fall according 

 to the relative demand for its use. By the middle of the nine- 

 teenth century the westward movement of population in the 

 United States had reached the prairies of the Central States, 

 where the cost of bringing land into cultivation was at a mini- 

 mum and the natural fertility of the land was at a maximum. 



With the expansion of the corn area the movement was first 



from poor corn land to good, then from good to excellent, but 



with the further expansion, less and less satisfactory corn land 



was resorted to and it was only in this latter stage that rents 



began rapidly to rise. This was partially true of wheat though 



it is a question whether any wheat lands in the United States 



have ever surpassed the best wheat regions of New York and 



Pennsylvania. The significant fact was the great abundance of 



good wheat land, which resulted in the decline of wheat prices 



and a decline in the value of wheat lands in the older wheat 



regions. The westward movement brought better lands into 



cultivation. These better lands, for example, the black prairie 



of Alabama, the alluvial soils of the Mississippi, and the black 



prairie of Texas, were selected spots surrounded by wide 



areas of less useful lands which were passed by to take the better 



lands. The general effect was to reduce prices and rents for 



the time. As better and better corn, wheat, and cotton lands 



were taken up, price levels were on the decline, and many 



farmers in the older regions suffered a decrement instead of 



getting the expected unearned increment in land values. But 



with the growth of population the increased demand for land 



results in keen competition for the better farms, which brings 



about rising rents. 



