84 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



consumption whenever it affords the more pleasure he is able to get 

 the maximum gratification permitted by his income. 



The great obstacle to varied consumption is the expense of a 

 varied assortment of goods, and this is felt most keenly where men 

 live in comparative isolation. Homesteaders in the western part of 

 the United States, and others in similar situations, have to content 

 themselves with rough and simple fare, clothing, etc., because it does 

 not pay them to make, in the small quantities adapted to their wants, 

 those little things which contribute so much to the refinement of life. 

 Every advance which tends to bring people into closer industrial rela- 

 tions is favorable to a more varied consumption and consequently to 

 an increase in well-being. Recent improvements in transportation 

 facilities and means of communication encourage the hope that the 

 varied markets of the city will one day be brought within the reach 

 of every country family, while the city families will be given opportu- 

 nities to share the free goods of the country. Such an arrangement 

 will add enormously to the general well-being. 



A third aspect of consumption involves its relation to production. 

 It is important, by attention to the laws of varied and harmonious 

 consumption, to obtain the largest possible return from the stocks of 

 goods available for consumption. It is equally important, while 

 securing a given return of pleasure from consumption, to select those 

 goods which can be produced with the least expenditure of effort. 

 This is the law of least social cost. Its first application has reference 

 to the natural conditions of a country. 



Economic progress depends in part on the adaptations of men's 

 wants to the productive capacities of the particular regions which 

 they inhabit. When colonists settle in a new country they bring 

 with them a taste for the commodities they were used to at home. 

 The soil and climate of their new environment are rarely suited to 

 the production of these identical things, and hence their well-being 

 depends for some time on the readiness with which they learn to like 

 things for which the new soil and climate are suited. But men do 

 not give up settled habits easily. They waste much time and effort 

 in trying to make the land produce what they like in place of learning 

 to like what the land can best produce. Thus in America it took the 

 early settlers a long time to substitute a diet of Indian corn for the 

 diet of wheat and rye to which they had been accustomed in Europe, 

 and many of their early disappointments were due to their unsuccess- 

 ful efforts to produce the grains of the Old World. 



