184 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



incorporated with the soil. These are some of the modes by which 

 the same land may be made to yield a greater produce; and when a 

 greater produce must be had, some of these are among the means 

 usually employed for obtaining it. But, that it is obtained at a more 

 than proportional increase of expense is evident from the fact that 

 inferior lands are cultivated. Inferior lands, or lands at a greater dis- 

 tance from the market, of course yield an inferior return, and an 

 increasing demand cannot be supplied from them unless at an aug- 

 mentation of cost, .and therefore of price. If the additional demand 

 could continue to be supplied from the superior lands by applying 

 additional labor and capital, at no greater proportional cost than that 

 at which they yield the quantity first demanded of them, the owners 

 or farmers of those lands could undersell all others, and engross the 

 whole market. Lands of a lower degree of fertility, or in a more 

 remote situation, might indeed be cultivated by their proprietors for 

 the sake of subsistence or independence; but it never could be the 

 interest of anyone to farm them for profit. That a profit can be 

 made from them sufficient to attract capital to such an investment 

 is a proof that cultivation on the more eligible lands has reached 

 a point beyond which any greater application of labor and capi- 

 tal would yield, at the best, no greater return than can be obtained 

 at the same expense from less fertile or less favorably situated 

 lands. 



The principle which has now been stated must be received, no 

 doubt, with certain explanations and limitations. Even after the 

 land is so highly cultivated that the mere application of additional 

 labor, or of an additional amount of ordinary dressing, would yield 

 no return proportioned to the expense, it may still happen that the 

 application of a much greater additional labor and capital to improv- 

 ing the soil itself, by draining or permanent manures, would be as 

 liberally remunerated by the produce as any portion of the labor and 

 capital already employed. It would sometimes be much more amply 

 remunerated. But even when such works had been accomplished, 

 much would undoubtedly continue to be produced under less advan- 

 tageous conditions, and with a smaller proportional return, than that 

 obtained from the best soils and situations. And in proportion as the 

 further increase of population required a still greater addition to the 

 supply, the general law would resume its course, and the further aug- 

 mentation would be obtained at a more than proportionate expense 

 of labor and capital. 



