258 
THIRTEENTH REPORT. 
of giving continuity of heat to the earth it is a perfectly satisfactory 
arrangement. 
In like manner it makes no difference whether we get more land, or 
more productivity from the same land. Malthus said that population 
tended to multiply by geometrical progression, while the means of sub- 
sistence multiplied by arithmetical progression. This is true so long 
as the process is on an “equal dose” basis. But the conspicuous fact 
of modern times is that means of subsistence are multiplying at a rate 
which makes the multiplication of population look like the pace of the 
historic tortoise compared to that of Achilles, whom logic tried to keep 
from catching up. The logic of the law of diminishing returns is of the 
same type. Professor Carver shows that on a certain area of land 
twenty men can produce more per man than fifty though the total pro- 
duction of the twenty men is but 3S0 bushels compared with 050 bushels 
produced by the fifty men. As a. matter of fact, in spite of Zeno’s logic 
we know that Achilles could overtake the tortoise, and we likewise know 
that the 650 bushels are being produced, and that everybody has more 
to eat than formerly. If pragmatism is justified anywhere it is in 
such- considerations. 
A farmer recently told me that his father paid for his farm, fifty 
years ago, by carrying the mail on foot from Jackson to Grand Rapids, 
Michigan, one hundred miles, taking just a week for the round trip. All 
the information he carried could now be transmitted by wire in three min- 
utes and the increase in the amount now transmitted per man in the mail 
service per week is geometrical progression under a tremendouse ratio. 
From this same farm his father hauled his wheat thirty-five miles to 
Jackson, taking approximately fifteen hundred pounds to the load, and 
requiring three days for the round trip. The Michigan Central freight 
can now transport wheat at least sixty thousand times faster; so that 
even though the most liberal division be made as to the part contributed 
by an equivalent of a single man and team now, a man’s productivity 
is multiplied several thousand times. This is what we add instead of 
an equal dose. It may be claimed, however, that the introduction of the 
railroad brought a period of phenomenal increasing returns, but that 
they were not maintained. It is a fact that there lias not been an in- 
crease in speed at all in proportion to the outlay devoted to increasing 
speed, and the law of diminishing returns seems herein to be finely 
illustrated. However, increase in transportation does not mean simply 
increase in speed, but much more it means number and extent of per- 
sons and things that can be transported in a given time. The number of 
people who have been brought into participation in transportation 
through the extension of the railroads, the increase in the power of 
locomotives, and the organization of the systems, demonstrates that 
the rate of progress has been continuous and of the same radical char- 
acter as the change from stagecoach to express train. The exhibition of 
increasing returns is multifarious. During the Boer War I received the 
evening paper in an interior city at five-thirty p. m., and read of battles 
that occurred at six o’clock that same afternoon in South Africa. This 
was in Tennessee near the home of Andrew Jackson who fought the 
Battle of New Orleans after the war was over, and he did not then hear 
of peace until several weeks after it had been declared. 
