PRINCIPLES OF VALUE 'AND PRICE 441 



relative decrease of food producers; (2) a relative increase of persons 

 engaged in manufacturing industries up to 1890, and particularly in 

 the decade 1880-90; (3) a slight decrease in the latter class since 

 1890; (4) a relative increase of consumers during the entire period, 

 as represented by other occupation classes, especially professional 

 service and trade and transportation. 



Under the well-known law of diminishing returns, a common- 

 place of economic science, as population grows, recourse must be had 

 to poorer soils or those less favorably situated. This may be delayed 

 by agricultural invention or development, such as the devising of 

 better implements or the learning of better methods of husbandry. 

 But unless these obstacles intervene, the law is sure to work. 



This is what has happened in America. From the earliest settle- 

 ments on the Atlantic Coast until within the last few years there were 

 at all times great areas of unoccupied lands open to the settler without 

 price, or at the nominal prices offered by railroads as they were 

 extended over the prairies. Thousands upon thousands of immigrants 

 from the eastern states and from Europe spread over the land, in such 

 numbers that production outran demand, until corn sold at 10 or 12 

 cents a bushel in the western central states, and at times was burned 

 for fuel, because it was cheaper than coal or wood. 



All this has changed. The pioneer has reached the last frontier. 

 The overflow of population from countries where land is scarce has 

 at last rilled our vast areas, and now in turn is sweeping over the 

 boundary into the plains of the Canadian Northwest. Yet the influx 

 from the older countries continues. The hamlets of the West have 

 become towns; the towns have become cities. The West has now 

 an urban population of its own to feed, besides filling the mouths of 

 millions in the cities of the seaboard. 



We have come at last to the time when even a bumper crop, as 

 the phrase goes, is little more than the supply for a year. A shortage 

 makes trouble. Even slight diminutions are felt more keenly than 

 actual crop failures of but a few years ago. We are facing the virtual 

 disappearance of desirable free land, the breaking up of the cattle 

 ranges into farms, the impoverishment of the soil in the Mississippi 

 Valley, the mowing of the forests of Maine, Michigan, Oregon, and 

 Washington. The new development of dry farming and the irriga- 

 tion projects of the far West will perhaps for a time match the march 

 of population, but in the end the birth-rate will control. It is said 

 that the area of all the arid lands that can be made available by 



