THE LAW OF PROGRESS te 
wheat land also doubled, there is no reason to doubt that the value of 
that invention would also be doubled; that is, it would add two dollars 
to the productivity of twice as many people as before. Something like 
this has probably taken place since the twine binder was invented. But 
suppose the population had doubled without any increase whatever in 
the available wheat land. Would that invention still have been capable 
of adding two dollars to the product of every person, or only a dollar 
and a half? Or, let the population go on doubling and quadrupling 
generation after generation, without any increase in the available wheat 
land, would the twine binder continue indefinitely increasing every 
person’s productivity by two dollars, or only one dollar, a half dollar, 
etc.? If there is no more wheat land to gather harvests from, is it 
certain that any more twine binders would be needed with a dense than 
with a sparse population, or that the value of the invention would 
increase at all? Has not Professor Norton erred in thinking of labor 
as the sole factor of production, omitting to think of land as even fur- 
nishing a necessary condition of efficient production ? 
Let us present the argument in another form. An agricultural 
invention might easily reduce by two dollars the cost of cultivating 
every acre of land under tillage, thus increasing the efficiency of labor. 
Obviously then, other things being equal, the more acres there are under 
tillage the greater will be the total saving effected by the invention. If 
labor and capital increase in proportion as the land under tillage in- 
creases, there is no reason to doubt that the total saving would increase 
in exact proportion as the land under tillage increaséd ; that is, it would 
continue to amount to two dollars multiplied by the number of acres. 
But suppose the labor and capital to remain stationary, while more and 
more land is brought under tillage, would the saving continue to be two 
dollars per acre, or would it fall lower and lower? This illustration is 
given merely to show the necessity of considering all the factors in a 
problem of this kind, and not a part only. 
So long as there are new acres of land being made available, and 
new funds of capital coming into being, all the results which Professor 
Norton posits may actually happen. But what does it signify to say 
that a large population using large areas of land may be quite as well 
off as a small population using small areas of land, and that an increas- 
ing population may be better and better off provided it not only has 
more and more land but is improving the arts of production at the 
same time? ‘This, it will be observed, is quite different from saying 
that we “arrive at the conclusion that the comfort and prosperity of a 
population tends to increase more rapidly than the population upon 
which it depends.” Until it is shown that this is true, however small 
the area of land or the supply of capital, it is no refutation of the 
Malthusian theory, and it is not even a criticism of the law of diminish- 
ing returns. 
