LAND AND OTHER AGENTS OF PRODUCTION 185 



There is, however, another agency, in habitual antagonism to the 

 law of diminishing return from land. For this I use the somewhat 

 vague and general expression "progress of civilization," because the 

 things to be included are so various that hardly any term of a more 

 restricted signification would comprehend them all. 



Of these, the most obvious is the progress of agricultural knowl- 

 edge, skill, and invention. Improved processes of agriculture are of 

 two kinds: some enable the land to yield a greater absolute produce, 

 without an equivalent increase of labor; others have not the power of 

 increasing the produce, but have that of diminishing the labor and 

 expense by which it is obtained. Among the first are to be reckoned 

 the disuse of fallows, by means of the rotation of crops and the intro- 

 duction of new articles of cultivation capable of entering advanta- 

 geously into the rotation. These improvements operate, not only by 

 enabling the land to produce a crop every year instead of remaining 

 idle one year in every two or three to renovate its powers, but also 

 by direct increase of its productiveness, since the great addition made 

 to the number of cattle by the increase of their food affords more 

 abundant manure to fertilize the corn lands. 



Next in order comes the introduction of new articles of food con- 

 taining a greater amount of sustenance, like the potato, or more 

 productive species or varieties of the same plant, such as the Swedish 

 turnip. In the same class of improvements must be placed a better 

 knowledge of the properties of manures, and of the most effectual 

 modes of applying them; the introduction of new and more powerful 

 fertilizing agents, such as guano, and the conversion to the same 

 purpose of substances previously wasted; inventions like subsoil- 

 ploughing or tile-draining; improvements in the breed or feed of 

 laboring cattle; and the like. Improvements which diminish labor, 

 but without increasing the capacity of the land to produce, are such 

 as the improved construction of tools; the introduction of new instru- 

 ments which spare manual labor, as the winnowing and threshing 

 machines; a more skilful and economical application of muscular 

 exertion, such as the introduction, so slowly accomplished in England, 

 of Scotch ploughing, with two horses abreast and one man instead 

 of three or four horses in a team and two men, etc. 



Analogous in effect to this second class of agricultural improve- 

 ments are improved means of communication. Good roads are 

 equivalent to good tools. It is of no consequence whether the 

 economy of labor takes place in extracting the produce from the soil 



